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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ In electronics, "solid state" and "semiconductor" are synonymuos. While a diode can be either a vacuum tube or a semiconductor device, a "triode" is always a vacuum tube; the corresponding solid-state device is called a "transistor". Crystal radios were known since the beginning of the 20th century. Lilienfeld discovered a primitive FET transistor between the two world wars. Shockley and his team discovered the bipolar transistor in 1947; the rest is just technological development. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Nov 26, 2017 at 4:23
  • $\begingroup$ You can produced free electrons in a piece of hot metal, the electrons will be attracted by another piece of metal(cathode) vs a transistor, electron simply tunnels through a non-conductor(T&C apply) don't get me wrong both are quantum mechanics but the cost, size, efficiency, and energy consumption differs greatly... $\endgroup$
    – user6760
    Commented Nov 26, 2017 at 5:57
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    $\begingroup$ Microchips are solid state electronics like transistors. Miniaturization happened within a decade or so of the invention of the first BJT. Would've happened sooner, but TI thought it was just a fad and sold the rights to Sony after sitting on the technology for over 5 years $\endgroup$
    – nzaman
    Commented Nov 26, 2017 at 14:10
  • $\begingroup$ This questions is deeply problematic - you can't make semiconductors impossible without changing physics and invalidating the hard science premise, so the only real reason you don't end up with them in a technological society is to develop something better first. But to do that in the realm of hard science, you need something that seems technically plausible, which raises the obvious issue of why we aren't using that instead of semiconductors. Hence you're limited to the thin band of ideas we think should work, but which haven't yet been reduced to practice. $\endgroup$
    – Chris Stratton
    Commented Nov 26, 2017 at 21:39