As every hi-fi addict knows, the amplifier is the part of his set that makes little angular noises into big round ones. In the parlor version, it is a dazzling assembly of vacuum tubes, resistors and capacitors. The invention of transistors twelve years ago enabled a speck of germanium to do the work of the vacuum tube, but most of the rest of the circuitry was still needed. Last week Westinghouse Electric Corp. showed an entire milliwatt amplifier, circuitry and all, contained in a single block of germanium hardly bigger (one-thousandth of a cubic inch) than the head of a pin....
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