[sdiy] Why transistors arent square!

[Ingo Debus]

Am 15.02.2009 um 00:14 schrieb Graham Atkins:

>
> On 14 Feb 2009, at 22:46, karl dalen wrote:
>>
>> This cumbersome half-moon shaped packaging are drag!
>> If the packages had been square, stacking and leveling to
>> cooling or heating surfaces would have been a breeze!
>
> They have to make them like that so that sdiy'ers know which
> way to put them on the PCB........Ouch !!! (I'll duck now shall I ?)

Joking aside, I think this is indeed one possible reason. If  
transistors were in a square package, with three leads in the middle  
of the package in a line, they'd at least need some marking. Much  
like DIL ICs.
BTW, there are/were some transistors in a square-ish package. Was  
that Ferranti?

I often wondered why DIL packages are the way they are. If there was  
on one side one lead more than on the other side, it would be  
impossible to insert them the wrong way. Tubes, on the other hand,  
can never be inserted wrongly. At least I don't know of any tube  
sockets that allow for that.

Ingo