On Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:05:14 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

snip
... the US consumer
electronics industry shot itself in the foot by not jumping on the solid
state bandwagon when transistors first came out.
snip

hahaha... I got a laugh out of this.

Its not that the US industry was caught flat footed. The US was
innovating... Doing everything to fight the transistor.

First there was the Compactron tube. Remember those... It jammed the
functionality of multiple tubes into one envelope and cost a fortune
to replace.

Then there was a whole slew of 1 volt filament tubes that enabled the
US industry to make "portable" radios that ran off a bunch of D cells
and a 45v B battery.

And finally there was the "Nuvistor". It's name even sounds like
Transistor. It was a teeny little tube designed specifically to fight
against the transistor. It looked just like a transistor too.

So yep, we killed ourselves. But it's not that we weren't innovating.
It's just that we were innovating the wrong things.