Single transistor hermetic packaging with indium cold bonds

Same anecdote as above; the corpus aggregate carries it under both cluster names. Tom uses it as a single beat.

So why is that important? It's not as important now as it used to be, but about fifty, sixty years ago when they were still making single transistors — or even sometimes today in critical applications like some nuclear weapons which we don't know about — when they have to bond something at room temperature and actually get a true metal seal, they will often use indium. They used to have single transistors, when they went from vacuum tubes to transistors: a single silicon chip with several leads coming in the base, and a little metal can on the top. That little metal can was just squeezed on, and you had a little bead of indium. You were making an indium solder bond at room temperature. So it was used many years ago.

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