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Università Degli Studi Di Padova Padua Research Archive Università degli Studi di Padova Padua Research Archive - Institutional Repository Seventy Years of Getting Transistorized Original Citation: Availability: This version is available at: 11577/3257397 since: 2018-02-15T16:02:20Z Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. Published version: DOI: 10.1109/MIE.2017.2757775 Terms of use: Open Access This article is made available under terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Guidelines, as described at http://www.unipd.it/download/file/fid/55401 (Italian only) (Article begins on next page) Historical by Massimo Guarnieri Seventy Years of Getting Transistorized Massimo Guarnieri acuum tubes appeared at the germanium. His device resembled the War II. Ohl, an American researcher break of the 20th century, giv- previous work of Julius Edgar Lilienfeld at Bell Labs, had invented the doping Ving birth to electronics [1]. By the (1882–1963) and Russell Shoemaker technique and produced the first p–n 1930s, they had become established as a Ohl (1898–1987) [5]. Lilienfeld was a junction in 1939. The patent applica- mature technology, spreading into areas German physicist who had migrated to tion for the transistor was submitted such as radio communications, long- the United States in 1921, where he had in June 1948. Although Shockley led distance radiotelegraphy, radio broad- patented a field-effect-transistor-like the team of Bardeen and Brattain at the casting, telephone communication and device in 1925. However, he had been Solid-State Physics Group, they devel- switching, sound recording and play- unable to make a working prototype be- oped their two devices independently ing, television, radar, and air navigation cause of a lack of sufficiently pure crys- because of the strong antagonism be- [2]. During World War II, vacuum tubes tals. Nevertheless, his patents raised a tween them, which was not evident in were used in the first electronic comput- number of concerns for Bell Labs’ law- the Bell Labs’ celebration pictures (Fig- ers, which were built in the United King- yers in 1948. A similar device, most like ure 1). The three men shared the 1956 dom and the United States [3]. Although an insulated gate field-effect transis- Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention. vacuum tubes had been a successful tor, was patented by Oskar Heil (1908– At the award ceremony, King Gustaf VI technology, they were also bulky, frag- 1994), another German, in 1935, who Adolf of Sweden blamed Bardeen ile, and expensive; had a short life; and moved to the United States after World for not bringing his whole family with consumed a lot of power to heat the thermo emitters. These drawbacks pro - moted the search for completely new devices. Alternative solutions had long been considered but without signifi- cant developments. On 23 December 1947, two research- ers at Bell Labs, John Bardeen (1908– 1991) and Walter H. Brattain (1902–1987), the former a theoretical physicist and the latter a fine experimenter, built a small device that was dubbed the transistor, a term coined by John Pierce (from the words transfer and resistor) and selected from among many others proposed. The device consisted of a semiconductor (the germanium base) fitted with two gold-tip electric contacts (the emitter and the collector) and was capable of amplifying an electrical signal [4]. A month later, on 23 January 1948, William B. Shockley (1910–1989) made the first junction transistor using doped FIGURE 1 – The famous official picture released by Bell Labs of (from left) John Bardeen, Wil- liam Shockley, and Walter Brattain to celebrate the invention of the transistor in 1948 conceals Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIE.2017.2757775 the grudge that had grown between Bardeen and Brattain and their group leader. (Photo Date of publication: 20 December 2017 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) DECEMBER 2017 ■ IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 33 him. In response, Bardeen promised of transconductance in solid-state de- At Bell Labs, Teal and Ernest Buehler he would bring all of them the next vices, which became a fundamental extended the germanium technique to time. Bardeen was a dependable man concept in electronics. the production of doped silicon mono- and kept this promise when he went to Bell Labs remained at the cutting crystals in 1952, and Tanenbaum pro- Stockholm to receive his second No- edge of the new research. Obtaining duced the first silicon transistor in bel Prize in Physics in 1972. That time, germanium with the purity and with- January 1954. In the same year, Teal, he was awarded the Nobel Prize with out defects as needed for manufactur- then director of research at TI, pro- Leon Cooper and John Schrieffer for ing the device in a reproducible way duced a silicon transistor capable of the BCS (from their ini- resulted in a very difficult operating in a wider temperature range, tials) theory of supercon- challenge. This was solved which was immediately marketed. Tran- ductivity. He remains the at Bell Labs in 1948 by Gor- sistor technology gained momentum only person to have been THE FIRST don K. Teal (1907–2003) by the mid-1950s, particularly in the awarded the Nobel Prize TRANSISTOR and John B. Little within United States, thanks to funding from for Physics twice and one WRISTWATCHES an almost underground the U.S. Department of Defense, which of only four people who WERE PRESENTED re search program that re- was interested in its potential military have been awarded two sulted in the adaptation of applications. As Nathan Rosenberg BY THE FRENCH Nobel Prizes, the others a method to produce mono- wrote in 1982: “The [semiconductor] being Maria Sklodowska- COMPANY LIP crystals serendipitously industry represents perhaps the most Curie, Linus Pauling, and WATCH AND THE invented by Polish chem- outstanding ‘success story,’ in terms of Frederick Sanger. ELGIN NATIONAL ist Jan Czochralski (1885– government policy to stimulate techni- Shockley played a WATCH COMPANY, 1953) in 1916 [9]. In 1950, cal progressiveness and growth of out- major, although contro- ILLINOIS, ON Teal, Shockley, and Morgan put and employment, in the postwar versial, role in the de- Sparks (1916–2008) devel- period in the United States” [11]. At the 19 MARCH 1952. velopment of solid-state oped the double-doped same time, this was one of the early elec tronics and microelec- technique, which led to a vi- great technological successes of quan- tronics after moving to California in able bipolar negative-positive-negative tum mechanics, a theory that had been 1953 [6]. He also claimed the paternity junction germanium transistor [10]. considered highly abstract and far from of the thyristor in 1950, namely the first A much better process for producing application at its appearance at the be- power solid-state device, which was doped monocrystals was conceived by ginning of the 20th century. built at Bell Labs four years later [7]. Morris Tanenbaum (b. 1928) at Bell Labs The first transistor wristwatches Bardeen and Brattain preced- in 1955. were presented by the French company ed Herbert Mataré (1912–2011) and The world’s first transistor manu- Lip Watch and the Elgin National Watch Heinrich Welker (1912–1981) by a few facturing facility was started by West- Company, Illinois, on 19 March 1952. Five months. These two German physicists, ern Electric, the production branch years later, American Hamilton Watch who worked in a Westinghouse-con- of American Telephone & Telegraph, was the first company to market an elec- trolled French company, indepen- in Allentown, Pennsylvania on 1 tronic wristwatch. Quartz wristwatches, dently invented a solid-state device October 1951. It made point-con tact which include transistors, were first dubbed the transistron and patented germanium transistors. The industrial produced by Center Electronique Hor- it on 14 August 1948. It was actually a production of transistors gained mo- loger in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in July point-contact transistor on a germa- mentum in the following two years. 1967, and they were marketed by Seiko nium crystal [8]. During World War II, Mataré founded the Intermetall Com- in December 1969 (Figure 2) [12]. The Mataré had been engaged in German pany in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1952. addition of a light-emitting diode display radar research, and, at that time, he Texas Instruments (TI), which had resulted in the first electronic watches had made the very first observations been founded in Dallas in 1951, de- without mobile parts (except sundials), cided to enter the new semiconductor which were first produced by Hamilton market and acquired a license from Watch in 1970. Western Electric to produce germa- The first commercial transistor- nium transistors in 1952. Raytheon ized appliance was a hearing aid that of Waltham, Massachusetts, mar- was launched by Sonotone Corpora- keted low-cost germanium junction tion of Elmsford, New York, in Decem- transistors in 1953 (US$7.60, which ber 1952. It used two subminiature dropped to US$0.99 in 1956). In the tubes (very small vacuum tubes that same year, Philco, based in Phila- had been developed since 1940) and a FIGURE 2 – The Seiko Astron, the first com- delphia, developed the first high- transistor, which allowed for a much mercial quartz wristwatch. The miniaturiza- frequency surface-barrier transistor, lower power consumption than the tion of a quartz clock was made possible by transitors. (Photo courtesy of A Blog to Watch, which proved to be suitable for high- previous models based only on sub- http://www.ablogtowatch.com.) speed computers. miniature tubes. This arrangement 34 IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE ■ DECEMBER 2017 FIGURE 3 – The Sonotone Model 1010 Hybrid Hearing Aid, which consisted FIGURE 4 – The very first portable transistor radio, exhibited of two vacuum tubes and one transistor. This hearing aid was the first by Intermetall at the Dusseldorf Radio Exhibition in 1953.
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