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TRANSISTORIZED

In the late 1940’s, AT&T assembled a team to replace vacuum tubes that had been used for telecommunications. Leading the team was supervisor William Shockley. Shockley was a visionary theorist. While his ideas were great, he was not very good with experiments. Working under him were two other genius scientists named Walter Brattain and John Bardeen. Brattain’s strong point was his ability to design experiments. Bardeen was a great thinker who was especially gifted at interpreting results. All three worked together along with others at AT&T as a harmonious team.
After working together for two years and not getting the results they desired, Bardeen and Brattain began to work outside the team. Together they developed the Point Contact Transistor. The Point Contact Transistor consisted of germanium crystal on a metal plate (used as voltage) topped by a gold foil triangle. The tip was cut to create a tiny gap which current flowed through. The current went through the device and ...

Posted by: Quentina Green

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