360Bell Labs scientists build the first transistor
On 16 December 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, working in William Shockley's group at Bell Labs in New Jersey, built the first transistor, a tiny device that could amplify electrical signals. It replaced bulky vacuum tubes. Billions of transistors now fill every computer chip and phone, and the three men shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
In the 1940s, radios, telephones and early computers relied on vacuum tubes. They were large, fragile, hot and power-hungry, and they often burned out.
At Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, a team led by William Shockley looked for a solid replacement, using semiconductors such as germanium.
On 16 December 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain pressed two gold contacts onto a slab of germanium and found that a small signal going in came out much stronger. They had built the first working transistor. They demonstrated it to company managers on 23 December.
Shockley soon designed an improved version, the junction transistor. Transistors were small, reliable and used little power, and by the mid-1950s they were in pocket radios and hearing aids.
In 1958 and 1959, engineers learned to put many transistors on a single chip, the integrated circuit. Today a single phone chip can hold billions of them. Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.
- 16 December 1947
- The first transistor works
- 23 December 1947
- It is demonstrated at Bell Labs
- 1954
- The first transistor radio goes on sale
- 1956
- Nobel Prize in Physics
- 1958
- The first integrated circuit
Sources: Nokia Bell Labs · Computer History Museum · NobelPrize.org.