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This seemingly simple device has dramatically changed the world in which we live in ways that those under 30 can hardly imagine.

When I was a kid (back in the olden days), radios were large (usually wooden) boxes filled with glass valves (tubes and the Americans called them) that too up to 30 seconds to actually start working after you flipped the power switch.

When selecting a new radio for the house, great consideration was given to the styling, type of wood and compatibility with existing furniture. If you were just a regular worker, you'd get a radio that picked up regular medium-wave broadcasts -- if you were well off you'd probably get the deluxe model that could also haul in short-wave stations from around the world.

In a way, the radios of the 1940s and 1950s were the internet browsers of their day.

This simple box (when switched to short-wave and connected to a suitable aerial) could connect you with the entire rest of the world. Hours of excitement and discovery could be had while glued to the tuning knob with ears pressed to the speaker.

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Because of the cost, few school-aged kids had radios of their own, although many of us built primitive crystal-set receivers connected to sensitive piezo ear-plugs.

I recall vividly when a neighbour came back from the USA with a "pocket-sized" transistor radio -- pockets were bigger in those days. Everyone was in awe -- how could such a small device be so powerful as to do everything the much larger radiogram could?

Sure, it had a flat tone and the music it produced was accompanied by a fair amount of hissing and crackling -- but it was still a miraculous device that cost a king's ransom to buy.

Jump forward some 40 years or so and you can now buy a tiny AM/FM radio with automatic scanning and vastly superior fidelity for just $4 from The Warehouse.

And, whereas that first solid-state radio had just six transistors, the PC on which I'm typing this has millions.

Now, instead of hunching over a hot mass of valves and transformers to try and listen to what the world is doing through a wall of static and noise, I can just connect to the Net, log into any one of hundreds of streaming audio or video sources, and listen to high quality broadcasts without fade or interference.

But, behind all this, the humble transistor is still doing its thing -- using tiny electrical currents to control larger ones.

Who'd have thought that something as basic as the sand on our beaches would become such a key component of our hi-tech lives?

The 50th birthday of the transistor makes me feel a little older than I'd like but I'm even more worried when I realise that the 50th birthday of the microprocessor is also just around the corner (shudder!).

Has there been any other invention in the past 50 years that has had quite the same impact on our lives as the humble transistor?

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