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KA9LCF > NEWS 25.01.12 01:34l 69 Lines 2690 Bytes #999 (0) @ ALLIN
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Subj: ARN: That Final Item
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KA9LCF
Sent: 120124/1931Z @:KA9LCF.#NEIN.IN.USA.NOAM #:33679 [164756] FBB7.01.35 alpha
From: KA9LCF@KA9LCF.#NEIN.IN.USA.NOAM
To : NEWS@ALLIN
THAT FINAL ITEM: NORMAN KRIM - CHAMPION OF THE TRANSISTOR -
SK
And finally this week we pay homage Norman Krim, an
electronics visionary who played a pivotal role in the
industry's transition from vacuum tube to solid state
electronics. Amateur Radio Newsline's Jeff Clark, N8TMW,
takes a look back at the man who put solid state devices in
the hands of experimenters, and ham radio operators world
wide:
--
In a long career with the Raytheon Company Norman Krim made
several important breakthroughs in popularizing the
transistor to experimenters. He also had an early hand in
the growth of the RadioShack chain,
Norman Krim did not invent the transistor. That was the
work of a scientific team at Bell Laboratories back in 1947.
Rather Krim saw the device's potential and persuaded
Raytheon to begin manufacturing it on a mass scale,
particularly for use in miniaturized hearing aids that he
had designed. As a result, thousands of hearing impaired
benefited from Krim's initial use of the transistor in
compact hearing aids.
But not every transistor Raytheon made was suitable for that
purpose and this is where Norman Krim's foresight took hold.
Harry Goldstein is an editor at IEEE Spectrum, the magazine
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He
said that when transistors were first being manufactured by
Raytheon on a commercial scale, there was a batch called
CK722's that were too noisy for use in hearing aids. So
Krim contacted editors at magazines like Popular Science and
Radio Electronics and began marketing the CK722's to
hobbyists. The result was that a whole generation of kid
engineers, many likely young ham radio operators working in
their garages and basements got to construct all kinds of
electronic projects. Among these were early transistor
radios, guitar amplifiers, code oscillators, Geiger counters
and metal detectors.
Goldstein says that as a result, a lot of them went on to
become engineers. And as a result, Norman Krim became known
as the father of the CK722.
After leaving Raytheon, Norman Krim bought two electronics
stores in Boston called RadioShack. By the time he sold the
business to the Tandy Corporation two years later, it had
seven stores. Today the chain has about 7,300.
For the Amateur Radio Newsline, Im Jeff Clark, K8JAC.
--
News reports say that Norman Krimm passed away of congestive
heart failure last December 14th in a retirement home in
Newton, Massachusetts, at age 98. As far as we can
determine, he was not a radio amateur. That said, the
impact he had on our hobby was and is truly immeasurable.
(RW and other published reports)
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