Stages of electronics and a night light

People have passed through different ways of exchanging information: gestures and facial expression, speech, writing, book printing and finally electronics. Electronics itself has passed through four stages. The first began with wireless telegraphy, radio (the textbook links it to A. S. Popov in 1895; other sources also name G. Marconi); in this period communication devices consisted of passive elements: wires, coils, resistors and capacitors. The second began in 1906 when Lee de Forest created the triode tube: this first active element could amplify a signal, so long-distance telephony, radio and television developed. The third began in 1947–1948 with the discovery of the transistor by J. Bardeen, W. Brattain and W. Shockley; a transistor does the job of a tube but is much smaller. The fourth is the age of microelectronics: the integrated circuit was made by Jack Kilby in the USA in 1958 and made industrially from the early 1960s. The task of microelectronics is to make radio components compact and place them on one base, thereby raising the reliability and speed of a device and cutting its size, mass, energy use and cost.