![]() ![]() He then invited reporters to listen to his voice being amplified with transistors through headphones attached to their seats. Standing next to a giant cutaway model of the transistor at Bell Labs’ New York City headquarters, he explained that it could “do just about everything a vacuum tube can do, and some unique things which a vacuum tube cannot do” ( second image). 1948) (Linda Hall Library)īown would later take center stage at the Jpress conference that introduced the public to Bardeen and Brattain’s invention, which by then had been redesigned as a metal cylinder smaller than a paperclip, which contained two fine wires touching a pinhead-sized sliver of germanium. Ralph Bown describing the structure of a point-contact transistor using a 100X scale model at Bell Labs’ Jpress conference, in Bell Laboratories Record vol. In May 1948, this group circulated a memo asking key executives and members of the technical staff to choose between half a dozen possible options, including “Semiconductor Triode” and “Iotatron.” When the ballots were counted, the winner was transistor, which the memo described as “an abbreviated combination of the words ‘transconductance’ or ‘transfer’ and ‘ varistor.’” Ralph Bown, Bell Labs’ vice president for research, organized a committee to resolve the latter question. After the holidays, they started working on a patent application, while management began brainstorming a name for the new amplifier. Incredibly, this makeshift apparatus was able to boost both the power and voltage of an incoming signal without a vacuum tube ( first image).Īfter sharing their findings with Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain scheduled a demonstration for Bell Labs’ leadership team on December 23, 1947. ![]() He then carefully maneuvered the wedge so that the resulting electrical contacts touched the surface of the germanium and connected the entire setup to a power supply. He wrapped a thin ribbon of gold foil around the wedge and used a razor to slice it in half at the vertex. ![]() The culmination of this “magic month” of research came on Tuesday, December 16, when Brattain suspended a small plastic wedge above a piece of germanium. Beginning in mid-November 1947, Bardeen and Brattain conducted a series of experiments that eventually allowed them to circumvent this barrier and create a solid-state amplifier. Shockley’s research team focused their attention on the surface of materials like germanium, where a layer of electrons prevented external electric fields from modulating current passing through the interior. Bardeen and Brattain’s supervisor, William Shockley, theorized that it might be possible to develop an improved amplifier by capitalizing upon the previously unexplored electrical properties of semiconductors. During the first half of the 20th century, electrical engineers had relied on vacuum tubes to accomplish that task, but those devices were bulky, fragile, and consumed a great deal of power. The two physicists were members of a Bell Labs research group seeking a new means of amplifying electrical signals. Seventy-five years ago, on December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain successfully tested the world’s first transistor in Murray Hill, New Jersey. ![]() The first transistor, assembled by Walter Brattain and successfully tested for the first time on Decem(Computer History Museum) ![]()
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