[Boatanchors] Re First American Transistor Radio Sold

Sat, 29 Mar 2003 21:56:27 -0600

The germanium transistor was first demonstrated privately at Bell Labs
Dec. 23, 1947, by William Shockley and his research team.

Transistor team was John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley
who were replacing vacuum tubes and mechanical relays and
revolutionizing the entire electronics world was awarded the Nobel Prize
in 1956.

On November 17, 1947, Walter Brattain dumped his whole experiment into a
thermos of water. The silicon contraption he'd built was supposed to
help him study how electrons acted on the surface of a semiconductor --
and why whatever they were doing made it impossible to build an
amplifier. But condensation kept forming on the silicon and mucking up
the experiment. To get rid of that condensation, Brattain probably
should have put the silicon in a vacuum, but he decided that would take
too long. Instead he just dumped the whole experiment under water -- it
certainly got rid of the condensation! 

"So I toyed around in my mind: How can I do this experiment -- I was
still being lazy; of course I could have evacuated the thing, but that
was the sample that had been fixed up to put down in this thermos and it
wasn't exactly conducive to evacuation; and it would have taken some
time to do this."-- Walter Brattain, January 1964

First integrated circuit (IC) demonstrated by inventor Jack Kilby of
Texas Instruments in 1958.

Gerry

Collecting & Restoring since 1959
Gerald Steffens P.E.
1540  7 Ave. SE
Rochester, MN  55904

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Duane Fischer,
W8DBF
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 8:53 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Boatanchors] Re First American Transistor Radio Sold

Very good! Many of you knew the answer. Texas Instruments developed the
four
transistors used in this set. But AT&T owned a certain lab that invented
the
first transistor. 	

What is the name of the lab and where was it located?	

What is the name of the person who invented the first transistor?  	

What year? 	

Why was he working on this project to begin with? 	

Finally, who invented the first integrated circuit?	

Duane W8DBF	

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