Introduction to the conference “le defi electronique de l'après‐guerre, une perspective historique”
Year: 1994
Type: article
Abstract: No single technology and industry underwent such a rapid transformation in the post-war period, and had such a pervasive impact, as semiconductor electronics.Several complex and interrelated elements contributed to developments in many scientific and engineering fields which eventually opened up a new era in electronics, the era of semiconductors.2 The quantum electronic scientific basis laid in the 1930s, and wartime advances in material sciences and semiconductor theory propelled by radar research, set the scientific framework.The potential needs of telecommunications and the organizational resources of Bell Telephone Laboratories, as well as the war experience, established the main technological and managerial framework.3 In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States military's pursuit of miniaturization converged with the emergence of the new military doctrine centered on missiles and supersonic fighter aircraft to quicken the pace of technological change and diffusion in semiconductors.Later, the rapidly growing computer market offered another driving force for such a transformation.However, in other countries like Japan the consumer electronics market took the place of the military and computer markets in the expansion of semiconductors.This is one indicator of the considerable diversity of the paths followed by electronics developments.Rapid technological change, the cold war, the creation of radically new markets, and competing and interdependent technologies characterized the uncertain environment of the first two decades of post-war electronics.Uncertainty conditioned the actions of researchers, industries, and states during this period.Due to the rapid and unprecedented advances of the United States' electronics industry and technology during World War U, European researchers and firms, as well as Japanese, generally simply tried to catch-up with the United States during the first post-war decades.As a whole, then, electronics appears as one of the most noteworthy cases of the new forms of scientific and industrial practice which emerges after 1945 in Western societies.It was almost everywhere an accepted model of growth and success.Furthermore, the very term electronics quickly carried a strong connotation of unescapable technological evolution. 113Without these new research groups, without a re-organization of the industrial development around them, both firms could not hope to follow the pace of technological evolution -for instance by buying licences as could previously be done.The striking point lies in the great difficulties faced by the management in trying to establish these organic links. ******The conference, held at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris was intended as a review of some trends in the history of electronics and as an exploration of some possible directions along which further research might be conducted.It is naturally impossible to give a definite summary but, as already underlined, some general lines of attack appeared promising.First attention was given to research trajectories and to the elaboration of particular research projects.These gave useful insights on the emergence of new forms of interdisciplinary scientific knowledge.A second focal point bears on geographical differences.The connection between scientific, industrial requirements and geographical constraints has not been often explored to date.However it helps explain how some specific models of development failed or succeeded according to various environments.The history of firms now has a
Source: History and Technology
Language: French
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2010328798