[HiDARG-MEMBERS] 70 years ago the transistor was born

[Max Vaughan]

Could not let this one go without a mention.
..>Max


70 years ago the transistor was born


December 27, 2017 | 12:03

70 years ago the transistor was born

70 years ago the transistor was born 

It was the day before Christmas Eve in 1947 while working at Bell labs that
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley managed to coax the first
transistor into life. Without doubt, this was the signal that triggered the
start of a huge technical revolution without equal.

Their ubiquity means we take them for granted. On some of today's most
highly integrated chips, there are more transistors packed together than
there are people standing on the Earth and this trend is ever rising.
Research is underway on the next generation of semiconductors with a
structural width of only 7 nm which could well mark the physical limit to
the Moore's Law prediction. So far, it has been a long journey, driven by
constant innovation.

At the famous Bell Labs in New Jersey between November and the end of
December 1947 two researchers named Bardeen and Brattain (assisted by
Shockley) developed and demonstrated the successful operation of a so-called
'point-contact transistor
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-contact_transistor>  ' which was the
precursor to the 'Bipolar transistor
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_junction_transistor> ' and successor
to the bulky and energy-hungry vacuum tube. In 1956, the three researchers
were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for their game-changing invention.
The Nobel committee got this one spot-on; John Bardeen is one of only two
people to receive two Nobel Prizes in the same discipline (and the only one
in physics).

>From this first step into the world of the solid-state device the rate of
new developments has escalated: as early as 1949 Werner Jacobi
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_circuit>
developed and patented the first known integrated transistor amplifier which
was not ever commercially exploited. Jack Kilby
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kilby>  was more successful with his
integrated flip-flop consisting of two bipolar transistors on a germanium
substrate. The first 'genuine' monolithic IC however was co-invented by
Robert Noyce <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce>  and patented in
1959. Throughout the 1950s a cost-cutting battle ensued between
manufacturers of existing vacuum technology and the semiconductor new-boy on
the block. Most of the now familiar major semiconductor manufacturers were
founded in the 1960s.

Today we hardly give them a thought but we carry tens of billions of
transistors around with us as a matter of course in the form of a
smartphone. Most new devices designed today come equipped with some
semiconductor technology. It's the season for celebrating so engineers
around the world can raise a glass to commemorate the transistor's three
founders and their inspiring Christmas breakthrough seventy years ago!

 

 

 

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73
Max Vaughan KF7MAX  Secretary
High Desert Amateur Radio Group
PO Box 723
Bend, Oregon USA   97709 

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