Business: Transistor Transition

No postwar industry has grown faster than electronics, and no electronic devices have paid off more handsomely than semiconductors—the tiny, spiderlike transistors, diodes, rectifiers that perform the functions of vacuum tubes. Though semiconductor technology is scarcely a decade old, industry sales have climbed from $15 million in 1954 to an estimated $195 million this year; electronics experts think they will be $350 million in 1960, more than $1 billion in 1967.

Wall Street is well aware of electronics' rapid growth, pays as much as 40 and 50 times earnings for what it calls "Buck...

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