On December 16, 1947, Bell Labs researchers William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain created an amplifier from a germanium crystal that boosted an input signal by 100 times. Various researchers had tried to develop a solid-state alternative to electromechanical switches and delicate vacuum tubes during the war. The Bell Labs Trio demonstrated it for lab officials a week later on December 23: Shockley deemed it ”a magnificent Christmas present.”
And only six months after the Roswell Incident. For the sake of argument, we’ll follow the official story.
Bell Labs announced it six months later. The trade press was ecstatic: Electronics put the three men, who would share the Nobel Prize for physics in 1956, on the cover. (Bardeen became a laureate a second time in 1972 for his work on superconductivity.) The New York Times only gave it a few paragraphs on page 46.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Happy Birthday! The Transistor Turns 65 This Week
