The History of the Transistor and One of It’s Inventors, William Schockley First Transistor Point Contact Transistor William Shockley The “Team” that has been accredited with inventing the Transistor William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain where awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics The First Silicon Transistor Modern Transistors

History of the Transistor Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed the first patent in Canada in Oskar Heil patented a similar device in Herbert Matare experimented with Duodiodes in 1942 while working on a detector for a Doppler RADAR system. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain produced the first point contact transistor in William Shockley produced the first layered transistor a few months later. The first silicon transistor was produced by Texas Instruments in 1954

What is a Transistor? The name is derived from the terms “Transfer” and “Resistor” thus “Transistor”. It is made from a semiconductor material, such as germanium or silicon. A semiconductor is normally an insulator but is now doped with a chemical to give it the properties necessary to operate like a transistor. The original transistors where made using germanium but most of them today use silicon. Simple circuit for a Transistor.

How a Transistor is made Three Transistors on a single chip

How a Transistor works

William Shockley William Bradford Shockley was born on February 13, He died on August 12, 1989 of prostate cancer. He was an American physicist and inventor. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Cal Tech in 1932 and a PhD from MIT in In 1939 he designed one of the first nuclear reactors. In 1955, with funding form Arnold Beckman, he founded Shockley Semiconductor In Palo Alto, California. Although this company was not successful, several people That worked with Shockley ended up starting several well known companies Including Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices. Shockley is credited for giving birth to “Silicon Valley”. After serving in various capacities during World War II, Shockley began working for Bell Laboratories in He became head of team tasked with finding a solid-state alternative to the vacuum tube. In 1947 Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain developed the first working Transistor. Shockley went on to improve on the original design and prove the principles by which it worked. His book “Electrons and Holes in Semiconductor” became a reference for future Transistor development.

William Shockley’s Other Interests While work at Bell Labs, Schockley became involved in Mountaineering. One of the area’s he climbed is called the Shawangunks or simply the “Gunk’s”. Shockley’s Ceiling (5.8) was named after him as a climbing route which he established in In 1963, a group called the Vulgarian’s began climbing Shockley’s Ceiling naked. Charter Vulgarian Dick Williams makes the first nude ascent of Shockley's Ceiling, in His buddies took off with his clothes so his descent was also a first Bill Shockley and Charles Kittel climbing in the Watchung Reservation in New Jersey.

Some modern pictures of people climbing Shockley’s Ceiling.

After losing his business, Shockley began teaching a Stanford University. He became involved in eugenics. Eugenics is the study of, or belief in, the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects. Shockley argued that the higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent would cause a drop in the average intelligence and ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. Shockley proposed that individuals with IQ’s below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization. By the time of his death, Shockley was almost completely estranged from most of his friends and family, except his wife. His wife didn’t even have a funeral because she didn’t think anyone would attend.

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