Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When were transistors first invented?
The first patent[1] for the field-effect transistor principle was filed in Canada by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld on October 22, 1925, but Lilienfeld published no research articles about his devices, and his work was ignored by industry. In 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented another field-effect transistor.[2] There is no direct evidence that these devices were built, but later work in the 1990s show that one of Lilienfeld's designs worked as described and gave substantial gain. Legal papers from the Bell Labs patent show that William Shockley and a co-worker at Bell Labs, Gerald Pearson, had built operational versions from Lilienfeld's patents, yet they never referenced this work in any of their later research papers or historical articles.[3]
The static induction transistor, the first high frequency transistor concept, was invented by Japanese engineers Jun-ichi Nishizawa and Y. Watanabe in 1950, and was finally able to produce some experimental prototypes in 1975. [29] It was the fastest transistor through to the 1980s.[30][31]
On December 1, 1957, Jean Hoerni first proposed a planar technology of bipolar transistors. In this process, all the p-n junctions were covered by a protective layer, which should significantly improve reliability. However, in 1957, this proposal was considered technically impossible. The formation of the emitter of an n-p-n transistor required diffusion of phosphorus, and the work of Frosch suggested that SiO does not block such diffusion. In March 1959, Chi-Tang Sah, a former colleague of Hoerni, pointed Hoerni and Noyce to an error in the conclusions of Frosch. Frosch used a thin oxide layer, whereas the experiments of 1957–1958 showed that a thick layer of oxide can stop the phosphorus diffusion. Armed with this knowledge, by March 12, 1959 Hoerni made the first prototype of a planar transistor, and on May 1, 1959 filed a patent application for the invention of the planar process. In April 1960, Fairchild launched the planar transistor 2N1613, and by October 1960 completely abandoned the mesa transistor technology. By the mid-1960s, the planar process has become the main technology of producing transistors and monolithic integrated circuits.
From November 17, 1947, to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey of the United States performed experiments and observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, a signal was produced with the output power greater than the input.[13] Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw the potential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors. The term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance.[14][15][16] According to Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, authors of a biography of John Bardeen, Shockley had proposed that Bell Labs' first patent for a transistor should be based on the field-effect and that he be named as the inventor. Having unearthed Lilienfeld’s patents that went into obscurity years earlier, lawyers at Bell Labs advised against Shockley's proposal because the idea of a field-effect transistor that used an electric field as a "grid" was not new. Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the first point-contact transistor.[11] In acknowledgement of this accomplishment, Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".[17][18]
There are many claimants to the title of the first company to produce practical transistor radios, often incorrectly attributed to Sony (originally Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). Texas Instruments had demonstrated all-transistor AM (amplitude modulation) radios as early as May 25, 1954,[7][8] but their performance was well below that of equivalent vacuum tube models. A workable all-transistor radio was demonstrated in August 1953 at the Düsseldorf Radio Fair by the German firm Intermetall.[9] It was built with four of Intermetall's hand-made transistors, based upon the 1948 invention of the "Transistron"-germanium point-contact transistor by Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker. However, as with the early Texas Instruments units (and others) only prototypes were ever built; it was never put into commercial production. RCA had demonstrated a prototype transistor radio as early as 1952, and it is likely that they and the other radio makers were planning transistor radios of their own, but Texas Instruments and Regency Division of I.D.E.A., were the first to offer a production model starting in October 1954.[10]
In electronics, a transistor is a semiconductor device commonly used to amplify or switch electronic signals. Because the controlled output power can be much larger than the controlling input power, the transistor provides amplification of a signal. The transistor is the fundamental building block of all modern electronic devices, and is used in radio, telephone, computer, and other electronic systems. From November 17, 1947 to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T Bell Labs, underwent experimentations and finally observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, a signal was produced whereby the output power was larger than the input. The manager of the Bell Labs semiconductor research group, William Shockley, saw the potential in this and worked over the next few months greatly expanding the knowledge of semiconductors in order to construct the first point-contact transistor. Shockley is considered by many to be the "father" of the transistor. Hence, in recognition of his work, the transistor is widely, yet not universally acknowledged as the most important invention of the entire 20th century since it forms today's building blocks of processors found and used in almost every modern computing and electronics device. In recognition of their invention of the transistor, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Milton Feng co-created the first transistor laser, working with Nick Holonyak in 2004. The paper discussing their work was voted in 2006 as one of the five most important papers published by the American Institute of Physics since its founding 75 years ago. In addition to the invention of transistor laser, he is also well known for inventions of other "major breakthrough" devices, including the world's fastest transistor and light-emitting transistor (LET). As of May, 2009 he is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and holds the Nick Holonyak Jr. Endowed Chair Professorship.
Buie invented transistor-to-transistor logic circuitry ("TTL") in 1961 leading to the development of the integrated circuit industry. Buie's technology technique was originally known as transistor-coupled transistor logic – TCTL. The TTL electronics invented by Buie became the electronics industry standard for two decades. The first commercial integrated circuit products using the TTL technology were made by Sylvania in 1963
and known as the Sylvania Universal High-Level Logic family.
The development of transistors in 1948 by Bell Laboratories led to major improvements to the hearing aid. The transistor was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley. Transistors were created to replace vacuum tubes; they were small, required less battery power and had less distortion and heat than their predecessor. These vacuum tubes were typically hot and fragile, so the transistor was the ideal replacement.The 1952 Sonotone 1010 used a transistor stage along with vacuum tubes, to extend battery life. The size of these transistors led to developments in miniature, carbon microphones. These microphones could be mounted on various items, even eyeglasses. In 1951, Raytheon manufactured the transistor and was one of the first companies to mass-produce transistors to throughout America. Raytheon realized that their hearing aid only lasted short-term and began to sell the vacuum-tube hearing aids again along with transistor hearing aids.
The above logic ICs were built from standard components, with sizes and configurations defined by the technological process, and all the diodes and transistors on one IC were of the same type. The use of different transistor types was first proposed by Tom Long at Sylvania in 1961–1962. In late 1962, Sylvania launched the first family of transistor-transistor logic (TTL) ICs, which became a commercial success. Bob Widlar from Fairchild made a similar breakthrough in 1964–1965 in analog ICs (operational amplifiers).
The unijunction transistor was invented as a byproduct of research on germanium tetrode transistors at General Electric. It was patented in 1953. Commercially, silicon devices were manufactured.
The grown-junction transistor was the first type of bipolar "junction" transistor made. It was invented by William Shockley at Bell Labs on June 23, 1948 (patent filed June 26, 1948), six months after the first bipolar point-contact transistor. The first germanium prototypes were made in 1949. Bell Labs announced Shockley’s grown-junction transistor on July 4, 1951.
For its first fifty years the phonograph turntable did not use electronics; the needle and soundhorn were purely mechanical technologies. However, in the 1920s radio broadcasting became the basis of mass production of radio receivers. The vacuum tubes that had made radios practical were used with record players as well, to amplify the sound so that it could be played through a loudspeaker. Television was soon invented, but remained insignificant in the consumer market until the 1950s. The transistor, invented in 1947 by Bell Laboratories, led to significant research in the field of solid-state semiconductors in the early 1950s. The transistor's advantages revolutionized that industry along with other electronics. By 1959 Fairchild Semiconductor had introduced the first planar transistor from which come the origins of Moore's law. Integrated circuits followed when manufacturers built circuits (usually for military purposes) on a single substrate using electrical connections between circuits within the chip itself. Bell's invention of the transistor and the development of semiconductors led to far better and cheaper consumer electronics, such as transistor radios, televisions, and by the 1980s, affordable video game consoles and personal computers that regular middle-class families could buy.
The trancitor as the combined word of a "transfer-capacitor" is to be considered as another active-device category besides the transistor as a "transfer-resistor". As observed in the table shown, four kinds of active devices are theoretically deduced. Among them, trancitors are missing to be the third and fourth kinds, whereas transistors, such as bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and field-effect transistor (FET), were already invented as the first and second kinds, respectively. Unlike the transistor switching the current at its output (i.e., current source), the trancitor transfers its input to the voltage output (i.e., voltage source), so an inverse relationship with each other.
The Philco Transac models S-1000 scientific computer and S-2000 electronic data processing computer, were the first commercially produced large-scale all transistor computers, which were introduced in 1957. It used discrete surface barrier transistors instead of vacuum tubes (as the integrated circuit had not yet been invented). It also used a fast adder, originally invented by Bruce Gilchrist, James H. Pomerene and Y.K. Wong of the Institute for Advanced Study. It incorporated a speed up technique for asynchronous adders reducing the time for additive carry-overs to propagate.
Shockley, angered by not being included on the patent applications, secretly continued his own work to build a different sort of transistor based on junctions instead of point contacts; he expected this kind of design would be more likely to be commercially viable. The point contact transistor, he believed, would prove to be fragile and difficult to manufacture. Shockley was also dissatisfied with certain parts of the explanation for how the point contact transistor worked and conceived of the possibility of minority carrier injection. On February 13, 1948 another team member, John N. Shive, built a point contact transistor with bronze contacts on the front and back of thin wedge of germanium, proving that holes could diffuse through bulk germanium and not just along the surface as previously thought. Shive's invention sparked Shockley's invention of the junction transistor. A few months later he invented an entirely new, considerably more robust, type of transistor with a layer or 'sandwich' structure. This structure went on to be used for the vast majority of all transistors into the 1960s, and evolved into the bipolar junction transistor. Shockley later admitted that the workings of the team were "mixture of cooperation and competition." He also admitted that he kept some of his own work secret until his "hand was forced" by Shive's 1948 advance. Shockley worked out a rather complete description of what he called the "sandwich" transistor, and a first proof of principle was obtained on April 7, 1949.
The ensuing publicity generated by the "invention of the transistor" often thrust Shockley to the fore, much to the chagrin of Bardeen and Brattain. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Though Shockley would correct the record where reporters gave him sole credit for the invention, he eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, and he essentially blocked the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen began pursuing a theory for superconductivity and left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley further and was assigned to another group. Neither Bardeen nor Brattain had much to do with the development of the transistor beyond the first year after its invention.
TTL was invented in 1961 by James L. Buie of TRW, which declared it, "particularly suited to the newly developing integrated circuit design technology." The original name for TTL was "transistor-coupled transistor logic" (TCTL). The first commercial integrated-circuit TTL devices were manufactured by Sylvania in 1963, called the Sylvania Universal High-Level Logic family (SUHL). The Sylvania parts were used in the controls of the Phoenix missile. TTL became popular with electronic systems designers after Texas Instruments introduced the 5400 series of ICs, with military temperature range, in 1964 and the later 7400 series, specified over a narrower range and with inexpensive plastic packages, in 1966.
There are numerous claimants to the title of the first company to produce practical transistor radios. Texas Instruments had demonstrated all-transistor AM radios as early as 1952, but their performance was well below that of equivalent battery tube models. A workable all-transistor radio was demonstrated in August 1953 at the Düsseldorf Radio Fair by the German firm Intermetall. It was built with four of Intermetall's hand-made transistors, based upon the 1948 invention of Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker. However, as with the early Texas units (and others) only prototypes were ever built; it was never put into commercial production.
The first bipolar junction transistors were invented by Bell Labs' William Shockley, which applied for patent (2,569,347) on June 26, 1948. On April 12, 1950, Bell Labs chemists Gordon Teal and Morgan Sparks had successfully produced a working bipolar NPN junction amplifying germanium transistor. Bell Labs had announced the discovery of this new "sandwich" transistor in a press release on July 4, 1951.[20][21]
Turner was involved with creating the 1N34A germanium diode at Sylvania in the 1940s. He began experimenting with germanium transistors soon after their invention in 1947. In 1949, before transistors were commercially available, he published the popular article "Build a Transistor", considered a "benchmark publication" in amateur radio. In January 1950, after commercial units were released, he published "A Crystal Receiver with Transistor Amplifier" in "Radio and Television News", along with plans for a three-transistor radio circuit. These plans – printed four years before the Regency TR-1 (the first commercial transistor radio) – were the first time most amateur radio operators were introduced to transistors as viable radio components. He continued development of his pocket-size radios as superior transistors became available, culminating in the 'widely read' "Transistor Portable with a "Punch"", an 'ambitious' four-transistor non-superheterodyne AM radio published in "Popular Electronics" in 1956.
The transistor is the key active component in practically all modern electronics. Many consider it to be one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century.[36] Its importance in today's society rests on its ability to be mass-produced using a highly automated process (semiconductor device fabrication) that achieves astonishingly low per-transistor costs. The invention of the first transistor at Bell Labs was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009.[37]
The static induction transistor, the first high frequency transistor, was invented by Japanese engineers Jun-ichi Nishizawa and Y. Watanabe in 1950. It was the fastest transistor through to the 1980s.
The first type of JFET was the static induction transistor (SIT), invented by Japanese engineers Jun-ichi Nishizawa and Y. Watanabe in 1950. The SIT is a type of JFET with a short channel length. The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), which largely superseded the JFET and had a profound effect on digital electronic development, was invented by Dawon Kahng and Martin Atalla in 1959.
Colby's first invention was the Colby TR-2 transistor radio, which he designed at the precocious age of 12 and sold to family, friends and customers on his paper-route, and is possibly the first pocket transistor radio. At 15, he built for his high school science project the world's first home earth satellite station capable of receiving signals from the Russian satellite Sputnik. As a college student, his passion for radio and inventing brought him attention in the LA Times when he and a friend built their own TV stations to broadcast video to each other over the airwaves. Shortly afterwards, he built a video security system for use by NASA.