The History of Transistors

On December 16, 1947, in Bell labs, the first transistor, the point-contact transistor, was invented. It was made from strips of gold foil on a plastic triangle, pushed down into contact with a slab of germanium. Walter Brattain and John Bardeen were the two to invent this device which would have eventually led to a communications revolution. The transistors were used to amplify the sound signals in telephone lines therefore allowing telephone conversations to travel any distance along the line.
Previously, an eccentric American inventor, Lee De Forest had created another device, which was a triode in a vacuum tube that could also amplify signal. It was patented by AT&T because it worked but the vacuum tubes that made that amplification possible were extremely unreliable. The vacuum tubes used too much power and produced too much heat, burned out quickly, and required high maintenance. In the 1930s, Bell Lab's director of research, Mervin Kelly, realized that a better device was need...