1947Reputable sourceWell documented
The Transistor
On the timeline · around 1947 ·
What happened
In 1947 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Labs invented the transistor — a tiny switch and amplifier made from semiconductor crystals, working through the quantum behaviour of electrons in solids. It could do the job of a bulky, hot, fragile vacuum tube in a fraction of the space.
Why it matters
The transistor is the building block of all modern electronics and computing — the physical foundation of the digital age. It grew directly out of quantum solid-state physics and earned its inventors the 1956 Nobel Prize.
Sources
- The Nobel Prize. John Bardeen – Facts (Nobel Prize in Physics 1956) · Reputable source
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