The telephone company had problems with vacuum tubes, too, and hoped to find something else to use for switching telephone calls. The idea of somehow using semiconductors (solid materials such as ...

On Oct. 3, 1950, three scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey received a U.S. patent for what would become one of the most important inventions of the 20th century — the transistor. John Bardeen, ...

Bell Labs gave its scientists the freedom to pursue basic research -- if they hadn't, the transistor would never have been invented. But the company's main goal was still to put inventions like this ...

Without transistors the modern world would simply not exist. But how do they work, and how do modern, atomic sized versions compare with the originals? The word "transitor" has become almost invisible ...

In What’s the point?: The Point Contact transistor I discussed Shockley’s white paper on the theory of the Point Contact Transistor. Let’s look further into this early transistor design. It is ...

Fifty years ago this month, Intel introduced the first commercial microprocessor, the 4004. Microprocessors are tiny, general-purpose chips that use integrated circuits made up of transistors to ...

The first lithography tools were fairly simple, but the technologies that produce today’s chips are among humankind’s most complex inventions. When we talk about computing these days, we tend to talk ...

Transistors have come a long way. Like everything else electronic, they’ve become both better and cheaper. According to a recent IEEE article, a transistor cost about $8 in today’s money back in the ...