"Mary, if you were a four legged animal and you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?"
"I don't know," said Mary, "but whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark."
TransistorIn 1947, the transistor was first demonstrated by Walter H. Brattain and John Bardeen to their higher-ups at Bell Laboratories. A microphone and headphones were connected to the transistor, and the device was actually spoken over "with no noticeable change in quality" as Brattain wrote in his notes about that day. The name transistor came from its electrical property known as trans-resistance. The original device, which the researchers first had working on 16 Dec 1947 was a point-contact version, which was later improved by William Schockley as a junction transistor. The inventors shared the 1956 Nobel prize in physics for their work. The transistor replaced the bulkier vacuum tube, and was referred to as the electronic engineer's dream.Image: the first point contact transistor. |
