A transistor is an electronic component with three or more electrodes which is made of semiconductor material, that can regulate a current passing through it. A transistor can act as an amplifier, and usually operates on a very small amount of power.
The transistor was not the first device of its kind. The triode vacuum tube invented by Lee de Forest in the early 20th century incorporated the key principle of amplification and served the same purpose of the transistor. His development of vacuum-tube transmitters made audio radio transmissions possible.
The first practical point-contact transistor was invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey in 1948 by American physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain developing the work of William Shockley.
On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.
Silicon Valley began in Palo Alto, California in 1956 because William Shockley wanted his new company, The Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, to be closer to his sick mother's house.
Until the introduction of the transistor, radios were bulky affairs hooked up to the mains, but that changed when in the early 1950s when the transistor manufacturer Texas Instruments commissioned the Indianapolis firm IDEA to develop the Regency TR1, the first transistor radio. At first only one in five transistors that were produced worked as expected and as a result the price remained extremely high. The Regency TR-1 cost $49.95 (equivalent to $456 today). Their performance was well below that of equivalent vacuum tube models and the Regency TR-1 sold about 150,000 units in total.
In 1953, a small Japanese company, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation obtained a transistor license from Western Electric Co. Two years later, they introduced their TR-55 five-transistor radio under the new brand name Sony. With the TR-55, Sony became the first company to manufacture the transistors and other components they used to construct the radio.
The world's first commercially successful transistor radio, Sony's TR-63, was released in December 1957 costing $39.95 (equivalent to $349 today). Because of the extremely low labor costs in Japan, after a few years they were selling for as low as $25. American teenagers begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, and by 1968 5 million units were being sold per year.
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) was invented by Egyptian engineer Mohamed M. Atalla and Korean engineer Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in November 1959. It is the basic building block of modern electronics, and the most frequently manufactured device in history, with an estimated total of 13 sextillion (1.3 × 1022) MOSFETs manufactured between 1960 and 2018.
The transistor performs many of the same functions as the triode but has the advantages of greater reliability, long life, compactness and instantaneous action, no warming up being necessary.
Transistors have had a tremendous impact on the electronics industry, and are now made in thousands of millions each year. They widely used in most electronic equipment, including portable radios, television sets, satellite and space research. They are the basis of the silicon chip, without which devices such as cell phones and computers would be very different, or they might have not been invented.
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| Transistor Wikipedia |
The transistor was not the first device of its kind. The triode vacuum tube invented by Lee de Forest in the early 20th century incorporated the key principle of amplification and served the same purpose of the transistor. His development of vacuum-tube transmitters made audio radio transmissions possible.
The first practical point-contact transistor was invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey in 1948 by American physicists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain developing the work of William Shockley.
On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.
 |
| A replica of the first working transistor. |
Silicon Valley began in Palo Alto, California in 1956 because William Shockley wanted his new company, The Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, to be closer to his sick mother's house.
Until the introduction of the transistor, radios were bulky affairs hooked up to the mains, but that changed when in the early 1950s when the transistor manufacturer Texas Instruments commissioned the Indianapolis firm IDEA to develop the Regency TR1, the first transistor radio. At first only one in five transistors that were produced worked as expected and as a result the price remained extremely high. The Regency TR-1 cost $49.95 (equivalent to $456 today). Their performance was well below that of equivalent vacuum tube models and the Regency TR-1 sold about 150,000 units in total.
In 1953, a small Japanese company, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation obtained a transistor license from Western Electric Co. Two years later, they introduced their TR-55 five-transistor radio under the new brand name Sony. With the TR-55, Sony became the first company to manufacture the transistors and other components they used to construct the radio.
The world's first commercially successful transistor radio, Sony's TR-63, was released in December 1957 costing $39.95 (equivalent to $349 today). Because of the extremely low labor costs in Japan, after a few years they were selling for as low as $25. American teenagers begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, and by 1968 5 million units were being sold per year.
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) was invented by Egyptian engineer Mohamed M. Atalla and Korean engineer Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in November 1959. It is the basic building block of modern electronics, and the most frequently manufactured device in history, with an estimated total of 13 sextillion (1.3 × 1022) MOSFETs manufactured between 1960 and 2018.
The transistor performs many of the same functions as the triode but has the advantages of greater reliability, long life, compactness and instantaneous action, no warming up being necessary.
 |
| Assorted discrete transistors. By Transisto at English Wikipedia |
Transistors have had a tremendous impact on the electronics industry, and are now made in thousands of millions each year. They widely used in most electronic equipment, including portable radios, television sets, satellite and space research. They are the basis of the silicon chip, without which devices such as cell phones and computers would be very different, or they might have not been invented.
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