Toni Dimaano Tech 12.23.2022 07:Dec AM EST

On This Day 75 Years Ago, The First Transistor Demonstration Sparks Innovation

The transistor was invented in New Jersey in December 1947, and it revolutionized both the latter half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.

On December 23, a group of Bell Labs researchers gathered in a lab where John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain were about to present the point-contact transistor, the first solid state amplifier.

Bell Labs Demonstrate How To Use The Transistor For The First Time

The scientists alternately turned on and off an audio circuit so that everyone present could hear the sound being amplified, Engineering and Technology History writes.

The amplification was instantaneous, which means there was no need for a warm-up period, unlike vacuum tubes, the then-common electronic device.

The transistor was first demonstrated to Bell Lab officials on December 23 by Bardeen and Brattain, but this first demo was just one step in a research trajectory that began in 1936.

After that, the first transistor was officially unveiled by Bell Labs the following year on June 30 in New York at a press conference.

The transistor later revolutionized the electronics industry by replacing heavy vacuum tubes and mechanical relays.

According to Wired, this technology evolved into the fundamental foundation upon which all contemporary computer technology is built.

With this, the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics was split between Bardeen, Shockely, and Brattain for their contributions to the transistor's development.

However, in some ways, the transistor was discovered at that time thanks to a fourth person, as Marvin Kelley, who was the head of Bell Laboratories, had brought the trio together.

Kelley thought that working with such uncharted materials as semiconductors required a synthesis of the various specialties that Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain each possess.

The Transistor Was Then Commercialized Shortly After The Demonstration

AT&T, one of the top telephone providers in the world, owned Bell Laboratories, which was the laboratory behind the development of the transistor.

Because of its popularity, the company realized that the transistor could be applied in ways that were not strictly related to telecommunications, Ericsson notes.

In order to avoid accusations that it was abusing its monopoly position in its domestic market, AT&T then decided to offer licenses to all interested parties on fair terms.

The transistors were quickly adopted by various businesses and technologies due to their high reliability in connecting rods and relays.

Furthermore, it's significant to remember that the transistor's first significant application had already surfaced prior to Brittain, Bardeen, and Shockley receiving the Nobel Prize.

Texas Instruments, the first company to market a radio of this kind, produced this tiny, portable radio, which was even given the nickname "transistor" in honor of the component that made it possible.

However, despite the transistor's success, Shockley had a fall out with his colleagues, which urged him to work on many other varieties of transistors after.

All of these variants are based on the process used to make the different layers, through which a signal to an electrode in the middle of the three controls current.

Less than ten years later, a Swede by the name of J Torkel Wallmark created another theory called the field effect, in which the current's channel size is controlled.

According to Marketplace, aside from the transistor, Bell Laboratories also created the solar cell, laser, communication satellite, charged-coupled device camera chip, and cellular phone system.