Standard Telephones and Cables junction transistors mean time between failures bipolar junction transistors point-contact transistors transistor transistors computing
CADET used 324-point-contact transistors provided by the UK company Standard Telephones and Cables; 76 junction transistors were used for the first stage amplifiers for data read from the drum, since point-contact transistors were too noisy. From August 1956 CADET was offering a regular computing service, during which it often executed continuous computing runs of 80 hours or more. Problems with the reliability of early batches of point contact and alloyed junction transistors meant that the machine's mean time between failures was about 90 minutes, but this improved once the more reliable bipolar junction transistors became available.
