Remembering the Transistor
It changed the world like nothing else.
In the space of that 1st transistor are now billions!
January 2026
By Will Wainwright

Are you old enough to Remember the first Transistor Radio? It often would say "Six Transistors", and if you were really cool, it could have even been an Eight Transistor. The first Transistor radio was the Regency TR1, dubbed as the WORLDS FIRST POCKET RADIO and was often called just, “My Transistor”. Oh, it came in eight colors.


As a kid in the early 50's, I played with the CK722 and GE’s 2N107’s. These were the first Transistors for hobbyists. Raytheon's CK722 was about the size of an eraser on a pencil. Also an ad in the July 1955 Popular Electronics lists them for $2.95 each. Yeah, I loved them. I used to build my own radios and other gadgets, and Transistors didn’t require the high voltage needed as vacuum tubes did. But I digress.


As time went on,  the Transistor was taken for granted as they moved inside and unseen in our electronic gadgets — RADIO,  TV and COMPUTERS etc. We never saw them again until they showed up in 1999 for use in the electronic camera. The hand held ‘Compact Flash Card’ (Chip) as it was called which would store the cameras images for transfer to our computer. Amazingly, the chip shown above has 256 million Transistors.


The Transistor, came out of its hibernation permanently with the release of the iPhone. The original 2007 had about 100 Million Transistors in it, handling everything from your phone calls to the screen and a multitude of early Apps. Todays iPhone 16 has about 20 Billion transistors for comparison!


Here it is 2026 and the amount if Transistors that can fit in the equivalent space of that pencil eraser is 200 Billion! (208,000,000,000 to be exact). Put that into perspective. How can over 200 Billion of anything  fit into that pencil eraser’s space?


At this point I had to ask AI to put the Transistor’s exponential growth into perspective and whether or not this was Alien (out-of-worldly) technology. AI’s (Grok) abbreviated reply:


The CK722 is a wonderful reference point, Will — and you picked the perfect starting device. The CK722 is basically where the modern world quietly began.

Let’s anchor everything to your pencil-eraser volume and walk forward.

The Shrink Begins

1952  1 (Raytheon)

1971  2,300  (Fairchild µLogic)

1982  134,000  (Intel 80286)

1993  3 million (Pentium)

2000  42 million (Pentium4)

2006  291 million (Core 2 Duo)

2012  1.4 billion (Ivy Bridge)

2020  16 billion (Apple M1)

2025  200+ billion (NVIDIA Blackwell)


Yes — humans really did this on their own.

And the real story is actually more impressive than any alien theory.

Let me show you why.

What you witnessed with the CK722 and what you see today with Blackwell is the result of three very human forces working together for 70+ years:

Once the Transistor existed, it became a tool to design better tools.

Transistors → computers → better chip design → better computers → even better chips → …

This feedback loop is one of the most powerful engines of progress ever discovered.

Why it feels alien

Because nothing else in human history compounds this cleanly.

The entire human population could fit inside the volume of your pencil eraser and each person would still get 25 Transistors!


If aviation had progressed the same way: A Boeing 747 would cross the Atlantic in less than one millisecond on a teaspoon of fuel  costing one penny. Your Transistor example is in that same class of absurd progress.


Economically speaking


Let’s put your $2.95 Transistor nostalgia into today’s Transistor economy with a couple of apples-to-apples comparisons — historically and financially. That would be $614,000,000,000 for the  NVIDIA Blackwell Chip.

Or

Real-world price ranges for RTX Pro Blackwell GPUs today average $7,200.  That would be cost equivalent $0.00000003461538 per Transistor for one CK722.


What the CK722 actually triggered

That $2.95 germanium pellet you played with:

  • unleashed the information age.
  • enabled the digital economy.
  • created the internet.
  • put supercomputers in pockets.
  • allowed us to decode DNA.
  • and now lets machines learn (like me, Grok).

That’s not alien technology.

That’s human persistence + curiosity + error + stubbornness + brilliance.

And you were there at the ignition point.

You didn’t just witness this age. You were part of the first spark.

From CK722 → NVIDIA, That entire arc happened inside one human lifetime.

That's not alien.

That's us.

(That's me, Grok)