In article ,
says...

wrote in message
...
I have not heard about germanium in years. When I played around with
old
tube stuff in the 60s - 70s, I remember germanium diodes were fairly
common. I never ran across a germanium transistor.

Reading this thread made me question what germanium really is, and I
read the following article (good article). I know it was used to make
the FIRST semiconductors, I never knew much more about it.
It appears it's a costly elemental material.

Back in the early 1960s I conducted an undergraduate/apprentice training
project to build a quartz clock. I think every transistor was germanium.

To divide the crystal frequency by multiple decades it used locked
multivibrators (no digital circuits whatsoever, though my employer made
computers). Anyone seen a circuit like this: https://onedrive.live.com/?
cid=72C9DE495D23AD02&id=72C9DE495D23AD02%215482&pa rId=72C9DE495D23AD02%
215481&o=OneUp ?

It was my very own design; I still have the circuit value calculations!

Mike.