December 23, 1947…The Transistor Is Born At Bell Labs, BUT…

Why did it take so long to come to television? In this story, I’ll answer that with a surprising bit of information I recently found, and also give credit where credit is due.

In the top part (above the line) I’ll talk about the RCA attitude toward the transistor, and below the line, give you the full story on how it was invented.

By coincidence, I was reading a paper called “The Eye Of The Peacock” by Richard C. Webb, the developer of the first RCA color camera system. I’ve included a photo of Mr. Webb above with his own creation…the first RCA color camera.

Here is what he said; “The timely invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947 was really the big bang for the exploding solid state electronics age. At the time however, many of the working engineers were unable to appreciate their advantages, and many vacuum tube engineers, myself included, put signs on their doors saying ‘help stamp out transistors’.”

“Loaded with pressing demands for ever more complex equipment, the old timers were quite reluctant to immediately embrace the temperature sensitive and expensive ‘little pills’ that gave no warning at all of impending failure.”

“Under stress, a vacuum tube was always graceful enough to glow red and blue and allow time for a quick power-down to save it from destruction. Until their original construction in the very temperature sensitive Germanium switched over to Silicon in the early ’60s, they were just an attractive nuisance to most of us.”

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John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley invented the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. In 1948, they won the Nobel Prize for their discovery. They are pictured below with the first transistor and a replica of it.

An all-star team of scientists was assembled at Bell Labs to develop a replacement for the vacuum tubes based on solid-state semiconductor materials. Shockley, who had received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936 and joined Bell Labs the same year, was selected as the team leader. He recruited several scientists for the project, including Brattain and Bardeen.

Walter Brattain had been working for Bell Labs since 1929, the year he received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Minnesota. His main research interest was on the surface properties of solids. John Bardeen was a theoretical physicist with an industrial engineering background. With a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University, he was working as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota when Shockley invited him to join the group.

The team commenced work on a new means of current amplification. In 1945, Shockley designed what he hoped would be the first semiconductor amplifier, an apparatus that consisted of “a small cylinder coated thinly with silicon, mounted close to a small, metal plate”. The device didn’t work, and Shockley assigned Bardeen and Brattain to find out why.

In 1947, during the so-called “Miracle Month” of November 17 to December 23, Brattain and Bardeen performed experiments to determine what was preventing Shockley’s device from amplifying. They noticed that condensation kept forming on the silicon. Could this be the deterrent? Brattain submerged the experiment in water “inadvertently creating the largest amplification thus far.” Bardeen was emboldened by this result, and suggested they modify the experiment to include a [gold] metal point that would be pushed into the silicon surrounded by distilled water. At last there was amplification, but disappointingly, at a trivial level.

But the scientists were galvanized by the meager result, and over the next few weeks, experimented with various materials and set ups. They replaced the silicon with germanium, which resulted in amplification 330 times larger than before. But it only functioned for low frequency currents, whereas phone lines, for example, would need to handle the many complicated frequencies of the human voice.

Next, they replaced the liquid with a layer of germanium dioxide. When some of the oxide layer accidentally washed away, Brattain continued the experiment shoving the gold point into the germanium and voila! Not only could he still achieve current amplification, but he could do so at all frequencies. The gold contact had put holes in the germanium and the punctures “canceled out the effect of the electrons at the surface, the same way the water had.” Their invention was finally increasing the current at all frequencies.

Bardeen and Brattain had achieved two special results: the ability to get a large amplification at some frequencies, and a small amplification for all frequencies. Their goal now was to combine the two. The essential components of the device thus far were the germanium and two gold point contacts that were fractions of a millimeter apart. With this in mind, Brattain placed a gold ribbon around a plastic triangle, and cut it through one of the points. When the point of the triangle touched the germanium, electric current entered through one gold contact and increased as it rushed out the other. They had done it – it was the first point-contact transistor. On December 23, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain presented their “little plastic triangle” to the Bell Labs VIPs and it became official: the super star team had invented the first working solid state amplifier.

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