Introduction To "The Transistor- A New Semiconductor Amplifier"

Abstract

It was a great pleasure to revisit one of the papers written during the dawn of the transistor age. This paper was first presented at the Winter General Meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in New York in early February 1949, the same month as the launching of the first U.S. rocket to enter space, loaded with transistorless telemetry. Recent publications [1], [2] are helping us to see more clearly how this semiconductor device came into being, how it was characterized, and how it was nicely named [3], albeit on the basis of a questionable rationale. The pregnant title, “The Transistor—A New Semiconductor Amplifier,” was arresting while at the same time curiously modest. The use of the indefinite article might have suggested that this frail and tentative device was merely one of a broad portfolio of contemporary developments related to amplifiers—“new” in the sense of “another.” In fact, there were no other contenders; the “crystal triode” was special. Nevertheless, at its publication, this paper would scarcely be recognized as one of the strident notes in the brilliant fanfare that was about to usher in profound changes for all human endeavor and shape life on Earth so powerfully and irreversibly. At the time of this paper’s publication, both Becker and Shive (Fig. 1) were at Bell Labs. Being a part of this history, the paper has more than clinical interest to me. Sometime during 1954, while working at my first job at the carefully hidden Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE), perched on the chalk cliffs of the English Channel, I lapsed into a reckless love affair. I suppose it was inevitable. I was young and impressionable, and these things happen, as they say. The object of my devotion was petite, black, with three legs, and had a heart of germanium. Though the decades have slipped by, I still hold her captive, with many of her kin, in the museum drawers of my home laboratory.