History of Transistors
“Study the past if you would define the future.” -Confucius
PRE-TRANSISTOR
Bell Labs began as the research and development section of the AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph Company). It was beginning to look for a solution for a long-standing problem.
- 1907-The Problem
AT&T brought its former president, Theodore Vail, out of retirement to help it off competition erupting from the expiration of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patents. Vail’s solution is transcontinental telephone service.
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone
1906- Lee De Forest developed a triode in a vacuum tube, a device that could amplify signals, including, it was hoped, signals on telephone lines as they were transferred across the country from one switch box to another.
AT&T bought De Forest’s and vastly improved the tube. It allowed the signal to be amplified regularly along the line, meaning that a telephone conversation could go on across any distance as long as there were amplifiers along the way.
Problem with vacuum tubes:
-extremely unreliable
– used too much power
– produced too much heat
1930- Mervin Kelly, Bell Lab’s director of research, recognized that a better device was needed for the telephone business to continue to grow. He felt that the answer might lie in a strange class of materials called semiconductors.
- 1945- The Solution
Encouraged by Executive Vice President Mervin Kelly, William Shockley returned from wartime assignments in early 1945 to begin organizing a solid-state physics group at Bell Labs. The group pursued research on semiconductor replacements for unreliable vacuum tubes and electromechanical switches the used in the Bell Telephone System.
That April he conceived a “field-effect” amplifier and switch based on the germanium and silicon technology developed during the war, but it failed to work as intended.
A year later theoretical physicist John Bardeen suggested that electrons on the semiconductor surface might be blocking penetration of electric fields into the material, negating any effects. With experimental physicist Walter Brattain, Bardeen began researching the behavior of these “surface states.”
On December 16, 1947, their research culminated in the first successful semiconductor amplifier.
The first point contact transistor that made use of the semiconductor germanium.
It is made of two gold foil contacts sitting on a germanium crystal.
On December 23 they demonstrated their device to lab officials – in what Shockley deemed “a magnificent Christmas present.”
“Transistor” is named by electrical engineer John Pierce.
Bell Labs publicly announced the revolutionary solid state at a press conference in New York on June 30, 1948.
This invention was the spark that ignited a huge research effort in solid state electronics. Bardeen and Brattain received the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1956, together with William Shockley, “for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect.”
Question: What is the reason for the discovery of transistor?
Jessa Marie 
The Electronic engineers use the transistors to control the flow of electricity in circuits. They can operate up to billions of cycles per second, amplifying or switching electric currents. Specialized transistors can make colorful displays and sense light.
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Good insight about transistor. Please answer the given question above:)
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by the way what is “transistor” ?
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A transistor is semiconductor device use to amplify signals and switch electric signals and electric power. By far, the most common application of transistors is for computer memory chips.
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they are not important
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Is it transistor you are referring to? If it is, I beg to disagree. You wouldn’t have the technology you already have without transistors. Electronic devices like computers and cellphones are composed of transistors. Just a two example of what you call “not important.” You wouldn’t mind spending your life without them right?
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It is for us to know the history of this material before using it for how many years , we must have to know on how it is discovered .Thank you po ! 🙂
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I agree to your thought. In order to understand how a specific thing works, a person must understand or have an overview on how or why it is discovered.
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Why do we need to know or to understand this thing if we can just use our electronic devices even without thinking what’s inside them?
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I quoted Confucius, “Study the past if you would define the future.” In order to understand or appreciate how a certain object works you need to know its history. We never know, maybe you will be the next who will discover such breakthrough in technology.
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Hi 😀
What is the biggest impact of it throughout its history?
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Transistors pave the way in the development of technology. Before it was discovered, vacuum tubes are the one in use but it consumes large amount of current that limit the development of technology. It has changed the society in areas like transportation, communication and computers.
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Is there a specific incident in history that lead to the invention of the transistor? What is the biggest impact it has had throughout its history?? :p
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The incident that lead to the invention of transistors is having the problem with vacuum tubes that are enormous and require too much power in order to operate. So they came up with transistors that are smaller which solved the problem regarding vacuum tubes.
About your section, I think I already answered that. Just refer to the previous comments. Thanks:)
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can you explain further how a transistor works? the anode, cathode, etc. what is the symbol for transistor?
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A transistor is used to amplify and switch signals. It can also act as a regulator.
The anode, cathode and the symbol of transistors are discussed in this blog gemmadenisesasot.wordpress.com:) This post is just an overview of transistor in the past.
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Bell team made many attempts to built a system with various tools, they achieve to have current flow from one contact to the other as the base voltage pushed the electrons away from the base towards the other side near the contacts. The first transistor also known as the point-contact transistor had been invented.
Trasistor is an electronic switch and for me the major reason why it was being invented is because they are the very basis of all modern digital electronics. Without semiconductor transistors, the only computers we can have would be made of vacuum-tube triodes, which need machines like the size of rooms to get the same amount of processing power unlike we have now that we can fit in a chip almost the size of a grain of rice.
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You have a great point:) Without transistors, electronic devices like cellphones cannot possibly exist:)
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and they also made that transistor to save money. they are very small and cheap 😀 Nice question!!! BTW 😀
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Thanks for sharing to us
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I think they have a lot of problems when it comes to technology before. A hard time manipulating machines lead them to think of a best solution for their problem. AND THAT IS THE TRANSISTOR. 😀
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They made a transistor to save money :))
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Unlike vacuum tubes, transistors are smaller making it cheaper. It is much affordable.
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Thanks for the information it will help alot. :))
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You’re welcome:)
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