The transistor is an influential invention that changed the course of history for computers. The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes; the second generation of computers used transistors; the third generation of computers used integrated circuits and the fourth generation of computers used microprocessors.
John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain, scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, were researching the behaviour of crystals (Germanium) as semi-conductors in an attempt to replace vacuum tubes as mechanical relays in telecommunications. The vacuum tube, used to amplify music and voice, made long-distance calling practical, but the tubes consumed power, created heat and burned out rapidly, requiring high maintenance.
The team’s research was about to come to a fruitless end when last attempts to try a purer substance as a contact point lead to the invention of the ‘point-contact’ transistor amplifier.
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain took out a patent for their transistor. In 1956, the team received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the transistor.
