It was on this day in 1947 that the first transistor was demonstrated at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. It was the culmination of a four-week period dubbed the "Miracle Month." For years scientists had been trying to find a way to make better use of the potential of electricity, but the technology that picked up radio signals was clunky. Vacuum tubes were big and awkward, they used a lot of power and put off too much heat, and they didn't work very well.
About 10 years earlier, Bell Labs had hired the physicist William Shockley to develop a new model to amplify current. Shockley assembled a team that included Walter Brattain and John Bardeen. In 1945, Shockley had high hopes for a new model he had designed: a cylinder coated with silicon, mounted to a metal plate. It didn't work, and Shockley asked Brattain and Bardeen to figure out the problem. On November 17th, 1947, Brattain was frustrated because condensation kept forming on the surface of the silicon on a device he had built. He knew he should put the silicon in a vacuum, but he was feeling lazy so he just stuck it in a thermos of water. He was shocked to observe the largest amplification so far in their trials. After that, Bardeen and Brattain had to do a lot of tinkering, but they felt as though they were on the right path. They replaced the silicon with germanium, and instead of water they used germanium dioxide, and then eventually phased out the liquid altogether. They used two gold contact points, which negated the effect of the electrons - just as liquid had done - but worked at all frequencies. The radio signal came in one gold contact and went out the other. On December 16th, a successful transistor was invented. The scientists kept their invention a secret, and on this day in 1947, Brattain and Bardeen demonstrated it to a group at Bell. The three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for their invention in 1956. The first transistor was about half an inch high; today, 7 million transistors can fit on a silicon chip.
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