This morning’s Electronics Design TODAY has an interesting link to a Lou Frenzel (W5LEF) article, “Who Really Did Invent the Transistor?” He had previoiusly report on the 70th anniversary of the invention of the transistor, noting:
The various historical records say that the transistor was invented Dec. 23, 1947 at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories by scientists William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain. On that day, they demonstrated transistor amplification with a point contact transistor.
What I should have said was that Bardeen and Brattain did indeed invent the first transistor, a point contact type. However, Shockley was not included in that patent. Later, in 1948, Shockley developed the first bipolar transistor. In 1956, Shockley moved to California and established Shockley Semiconductor, one of the first, if not the first, semiconductor company in what we now know as Silicon Valley. And the rest is history, as they say. More details can be found in Shockley’s definitive biography Broken Genius by Joel Shurkin.
There are some other musings about other events in the history of electronics that are interesting to read.
Don, ND6T says
Check out U.S. patent 1745175. Filed October of 1926 ! By J E Lilianfeld. Sadly, semiconductor chemistry had not developed sufficiently to support his invention to commercial dependability. I vaguely recall that he actually built a radio using copper sulfate films! His devices were FETs rather than BJTs. A real visionary.
73, Don
Goody K3NG says
Broken Genius is an apt description of Shockley. He had some awful views and opinions of society and race.