Transistorized State: The Technique of Hegemony in the Early Cold War
Eric A. Schuster · Perspectives on Global Development and Technology · 2015
The history of the transistor contributes to reassessments of the origins ofushegemony in the 1940s and 1950s. Areas of conflict emerged betweenuscapital and the American state during the World Wariiand in the immediate postwar years. Because the transistor evolved as a direct consequence of state investment during these years, the transistor’s history illuminates tensions over military spending and defense production, and the ways in whichmncs, academia, and the state overcame tension in the establishment of hegemony.