| 1947 |
COURTESY OF BELL LABS, LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES
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It looks like a few metal scraps and a paper clip, but it sparked the silicon revolution that remade industry in the second half of the 20th century. The New York Times showed little excitement when it reported in June, 1948, that "a device called a transistor; which has several applications in radio where a vacuum tube ordinarily is employed, was demonstrated for the first time yesterday...." The tiny device gave off little heat and offered extraordinary power savings over the bulky and burnout-prone vacuum tubes. When the first mass-produced transistor radios appeared in 1954, they flopped, because of their then-exorbitant $49.95 price tag. But within a decade, the transistor was in everything from computers to guided missiles. Bell Laboratories inventors Walter Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Shockley shared the 1956 Nobel prize in physics for their discovery.
Related Links
PBS: "Transistorized! The History of the Invention of the Transistor"