THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG — GERMANIUM

Don't you just love the parlance "crystal diode".  1954 was the year that Mullard took their first steps into the mass market with semiconductors.  Trumpetting their new  product as having low shunt capacities and higher rectification efficiency than those old fashioned valve things, the range started with two devices specially developed for television use.   There were teething problems as the TV trade tended to attach these new fangled devices into TV circuits using a poker heated in t'fire thence cooking these early and not particularly robiut devices but application of tweezer heatsinks thoughfully provided by an arrangement between Mullard and...

A pal of mine, knowing I am a chemist decided to bring me this photograph from his time at Mullard Semiconductors - he thought the Dreschel bottles in the background would float my boat but in actuality it's the process being undertaken that piqued my interest.  My pal told me that this was an Orgone Accumulator - silly boy - but we know different!! What we have here is a photograph taken in 1955 at the Mullard semiconductor materials laboratory with a Process Engineer purifying an ingot of Germanium for semiconductor manufacturing by a process known as Zone Refining, an...