Innovation & Wealth › Mass production & the consumer age › Microchips and the personal computer
Transistor (Bell Labs)
December 1947· Innovation· Innovations & industries
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
A tiny semiconductor switch and amplifier, invented at Bell Labs in 1947, that replaced the vacuum tube in electronics.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
At Bell Labs, AT&T's research arm in New Jersey, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain made the first transistor in December 1947: a germanium crystal that could amplify and switch electric signals. William Shockley soon designed the sturdier junction transistor. It did a vacuum tube's job far smaller, cooler and more reliably. Under antitrust pressure, AT&T licensed it widely, for $25,000 in 1952, and royalty-free for existing patents after a 1956 consent decree.
Impact on society and the economy
Every computer, phone and digital device runs on transistors; one chip now holds billions. Bell's wide licensing let start-ups and foreign firms like Sony build on it, not just AT&T.
How we know
Brattain's December 1947 lab notebook entries, the 1948 announcement and patents, the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for all three men, and the AT&T consent decree.
Still debated
Credit was bitter: Shockley was left off the first patent. Two Germans working near Paris, Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker, independently built a similar device in 1948.
Connections (4)
▸Transistor (Bell Labs) led to Microchips and the personal computerWell documented
The connection
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but wiring thousands of them together by hand was unreliable, a problem engineers called the 'tyranny of numbers.' Kilby and Noyce solved it by forming transistors and their connections together on one piece of semiconductor, the integrated circuit. Shrinking transistors on chips then drove decades of cheaper, faster computers.
When and how
Bell Labs, New Jersey (1947); Texas Instruments, Dallas (1958); Fairchild Semiconductor, Mountain View (1959), whose founders had worked under transistor co-inventor William Shockley.
How we know
Patents, lab notebooks and the inventors' own accounts trace a direct technical line from the transistor to the chip.
Debates
The link itself is not in doubt; debate is over credit between Kilby and Noyce and over how much military funding steered the path.
▸Transistor (Bell Labs) was licensed for radios by Sony (Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka)Well documented
The connection
In 1953 Morita paid Western Electric, AT&T's manufacturing arm, $25,000 for a transistor license, though Japan's trade ministry at first balked at spending scarce dollars. Bell engineers thought transistors suited hearing aids; Sony improved them for radio and launched Japan's first transistor radio, the TR-55, in 1955, then the pocket-size TR-63 for export in 1957.
When and how
License agreed in 1953–54 between Western Electric and Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo; radios built in Tokyo; the TR-63 sold widely in the US from 1957.
How we know
License records, Morita's memoir and Sony's product histories document the deal and the radios.
Debates
The first transistor radio was American, the Regency TR-1 of 1954. Why Sony rather than US firms came to dominate is debated: price, quality, marketing, or US firms' disinterest.
▸Transistor (Bell Labs) spawned the start-ups funded by Venture capital and Silicon ValleyMostly agreed
The connection
Transistor co-inventor William Shockley opened a lab in Mountain View in 1956 to make silicon transistors. Eight of his engineers, frustrated with his management, quit in 1957, and Arthur Rock found backing for them to found Fairchild Semiconductor. Fairchild's alumni launched dozens of chip firms, the 'Fairchildren' including Intel and AMD, setting the template for venture-funded tech start-ups.
When and how
Mountain View and Palo Alto, California, 1956–1960s; the 'traitorous eight' included Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore; Fairchild Camera and Instrument provided the 1957 financing.
How sure are we?
Company founding records and family trees of Fairchild spin-offs, compiled by researchers and the Computer History Museum, document the chain.
Debates
Why the cluster formed there and not around Boston or New Jersey is debated: Stanford's Frederick Terman, military contracts, California's refusal to enforce non-compete clauses, or Shockley's mother living in Palo Alto.
▸World War II mobilization and wartime research spurred the electronics research behind Transistor (Bell Labs)Mostly agreed
The connection
Radar needed crystal detectors that vacuum tubes could not match, so wartime programs at MIT's Radiation Laboratory, Purdue and Bell Labs learned to purify germanium and silicon. That semiconductor know-how, plus Bell Labs' expanded postwar research team, set up the 1947 transistor breakthrough. Military buyers then funded much early transistor production.
When and how
MIT Radiation Laboratory, Purdue University and Bell Labs, 1940–1945; Bell Labs formed its solid-state group in 1945 under William Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan.
How sure are we?
Wartime research reports, Bell Labs records, and histories like Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson's Crystal Fire (1997) document the link.
Debates
Bell Labs had begun semiconductor work before the war, so how much the war accelerated, rather than caused, the invention is debated.