Electronic – What was the crysistor

computers

I'm reading through Jim Williams' "Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science and Personalities", and a mysterious component called a crysistor is mentioned. There are a few clues in the text, like the fact that it was a superconducting magnetic memory that "showed promise of revolutionizing the computer world". I can't find any reference to the crysistor aside from this book. What was the crysistor and how did it work?

Best Answer

I suspect it might have been the conflation of cryosistor (a completely different germanium cryogenic unijunction-like device that worked on the principle of impact ionization) and crytron (not to be confused with the krytron which is used to make loud noises).


I think he was referring specifically to the crytron and got the name mixed up a bit in his memory.


The chapter is not error-free (for example, it refers to "new low-temperature superconductors" which would not be an advantage, especially compared to liquid helium).

Here is the actual quote, courtesy of Google books:

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The IBM paper describing the crytron which I linked above was published in October of 1957, so it would have been fresh news in 1959 when Mr. Wilensky graduated.