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Seventy Years of Getting Transistorized

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Availability: This version is available at: 11577/3257397 since: 2018-02-15T16:02:20Z

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and 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 . His device resembled the War II. Ohl, an American researcher break of the 20th century, giv- previous work of Julius Edgar Lilienfeld at , 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 was submitted such as radio communications, long- the 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- 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, (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 (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 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 , 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 display radar research, and, at that time, he (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. 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 . 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. commercial product in the world to use a transistor. It was introduced in the (Photo courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of United States on 29 December 1952. (Photo courtesy of France1978, Flickr.) Herbert Matare.) resulted in a much longer battery life with a portable radio that was based could be powered by small batteries and, consequently, lower operational on six transistors; however, it was too with good autonomy (20–30 h at a time). costs (Figure 3). The first fully tran- expensive to be marketed. In fact, the The success of the Regency TR-1 was sistorized and miniaturized hearing spread in the characteristics of the six reputedly influenced by sociopolitical aids were produced in 1953, but they transistors required expensive manual factors. In the Cold War years, the Amer- were initially hampered by an operat- selection and calibration work. The first ican population was appalled by the ing life of only a few weeks due to tran- commercial transistorized radio was fear of a Soviet ballistic nuclear missile sistor damping. presented by Industrial Development attack, and radios that could always be Transistors made it possible to build Engineering Associate (IDEA), a small In- small implantable pacemakers. In 1957, dianapolis company, in November 1954 Earl Bakken (b. 1924) of Minneapolis and marketed the following year. The made the first wearable external pace- Regency TR-1 used only four TI transis- maker, provided with electrodes passing tors and featured an innovative circuit through the skin to reach the myocar- topology conceived by Richard C. Koch dium. It was installed on a patient the (1922–2010) that was insensitive to the following year. In 1958, the engineer dispersion of transistor characteristics Rune Elmqvist (1906–1996) of Siemens- [14]. It also performed superheterodyne Elema, a Swedish company controlled tuning, was po wered by a 22.5-V battery, by Siemens and Halske, made the first and weighed 340 g. This radio was pro- implantable model, which was placed vided with a very attractive design (Fig- in contact with the myocardium. It was ure 5) and was priced at about US$50 implanted by Swedish surgeon Ake Sen- (corresponding to US$455 in modern ning (1915–2000), and it only worked for currency). The TR-1 sold 150,000 units three hours, but it demonstrated the fea- in the United States, a considerable suc- sibility of the procedure and paved the cess given its poor sound quality. Very way for a new field of therapeutic devic- early pocket-sized radio receivers had es. Previous pacemakers used vacuum appeared from 1945 and were based on tubes and were therefore cumbersome. subminiature tubes (the Belmont Bou- The first one, made in 1950, was a trans- levard receiver adopted five Raytheon cutaneous grid-powered device that had tubes and a superheterodyne circuit). to be placed near the patient. Besides being much more compact, In 1953, Intermetall presented the these devices con sumed less power first efficient transistor (four units) ra- than conventional vacuum tubes. How- FIGURE 5 – The IDEA Regency TR-1 of 1954 dio at the Düsseldorf Radio Fair. It was ever, early transistor radios provided a was the first commercial transistor radio a unique handmade model that was not further step ahead. Tiny electronic cir- receiver. An innovative circuit topology intended for commercialization (Figure 4) cuits left room for a speaker, instead of designed by Richard C. Koch allowed the use of only four transistors and made the radio [13]. A year later, TI, after some previ- an earphone, and consumed much less insensitive to the dispersion of their charac- ous inefficient prototypes, came out power. Consequently, transistor radios teristics. (Photo courtesy of Robert Davidson.)

DECEMBER 2017 ■ IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 35 kept in a pocket were perceived as a tool (1921–2001) built the first transistorized in 1957. Mailüfterl was designed by that was capable of alerting people at at the Victoria University of Heinz Zemanek (1920–2014) at Tech- any time, allowing them to reach atomic in November 1953 [16]. This nische Universität Wien (then the shelters quickly [15]. was a 48-b demonstrative device based College of Technology) in 1954, when it The first European commercial tran- on 92 point-contact germanium transis- was possibly the first project of a fully sistor portable radio was produced by tors and 550 vacuum tubes. Transistor transistorized computer [17]. Built in an British Pye in 1956. Ten digital computer, the first underground work making use of 3,000 years earlier, Masaru Ibuka transistorized American transistors donated by Philips, it was (1908–1997) and Akio Mori- com puter (featuring 800 completed in 1958, becoming the first ta (1921–1999) had found- EVERY YEAR, transistors but also ther- computer of that kind in continental ed a small company named MANY BILLIONS OF moelectric valves and an Europe. It operated at the pretty high Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo in Ja- TRANSISTORS ARE amazing 1-MHz clock) was clock frequency of 132 kHz (Figure 6). pan. In 1950, during a trip MANUFACTURED AS built by Bell Labs in 1954. The first commercial transistorized com- It was designed for U.S. Air puter was the Metrovick 950, which was to the United States, Ikuba DISCRETE DEVICES, had acquired a manufac- Force airborne uses and it built by British Metropolitan-Vickers in turing license and instruc- AND MANY consumed fewer than 100 W, 1956. Two years later, five companies tions to produce junction MORE ARE USED much less than any model launched their commercial models: Sie- transistors from Bell Labs IN INTEGRATED based on vacuum tubes. mens and Halske with 2002 (heir of K. for US$50,000 (US$457,000 CIRCUITS AS PART Transistor Electronic Digi- Zuse’s models), Olivetti with Elea 9003, today). In 1955, they pre- OF COMPLETE tal Automatic Computer, International Business Machines with sented and marketed the the first fully transistorized 7070, Digital Equipment with PDP-1, and ELECTRONIC TR-55, the first portable computer, was introduced Sperry Rand. Japanese transistorized CIRCUITS. in 1955. It was built at the The era of solid-state electronics had (five units) radio, at that Atomic Research Establish- begun. As in the case of other techno- time the smallest in the world. It was ini- ment in Harwell, United Kingdom. It used logical breakthroughs, the repercus- tially distributed in small quantities for 324 point-contact transistors built by sions of the invention of the transistor the domestic market. In 1958, the com- British company Standard Telephones expanded much further than its inven- pany changed its name to Sony Corpo- and Cables and 76 junction transistors. tors could have imagined. In the United ration and produced the TR-63 model, Its clock operated at 58 kHz, and its States, more than elsewhere, federal which gained tremendous success on 64-kB memory was provided by a magnet- support together with the commercial the world mar ket and pushed the com- ic drum. TX-0 was built using 3,600 Philco success of the first transistor appli- pany to become one of the largest con- transistors at the Massachusetts Insti- ances provided the financial resources sumer electronics companies world wide. tute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1955, that were required to develop the very In 1961, Sony sold the TV8-301, the first and it started operations in 1956. expensive processes for the production transistorized, compact, lightweight, and The Japanese ETL Mark III was put into of the high-purity . As semiportable television set. operation in July 1956, and the Canadian market expanded, transistors could be Transistors were also quickly adopted Defense Research mass produced in highly automated in cutting-edge technology. Tom Kilburn Establishment Computer appeared processes at an extremely low cost. The possibility of operating both as a two-state electronic switch, simi- lar to a relay but much faster, and for signal modulation with very low losses and size, unlike vacuum tubes, allowed transistors to be used in an incredible number of functions, in both informa- tion and power applications. In just a few decades, they became the key com- ponents of almost all modern electron- ics, revolutionizing signal processing, information technologies, and power electronics. The transistor has become as ubiquitous as few other products. Every year, many billions of transistors are manufactured as discrete devices, and many more are used in integrated FIGURE 6 – The control panel of the Mailüfterl, completed by Heinz Zemanek in 1958. The design, started four years earlier, was an early transistorized computer. (Photo courtesy of circuits (ICs) as part of complete elec- Wikimedia Commons.) tronic circuits. A processor transistor

36 IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE ■ DECEMBER 2017 can now incorporate some millions of [2] M. Guarnieri, “The age of vacuum tubes: The [10] W. Shockley, M. Sparks, and G. K. Teal, “p-n conquest of analog communications,” IEEE junction transistors,” Phys. Rev., vol. 83, no. 1, transistors. With these credentials, the Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 52–54, June pp. 151–162, July 1951. transistor has conquered areas that 2012. [11] N. Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology [3] M. Guarnieri, “The age of vacuum tubes: Merg- and Economics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge traditionally pertained to other tech- ing with digital computing,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Univ. Press, 1982. nologies. It is often easier and cheaper Mag., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 52–55, Sept. 2012. [12] A. H. Frei. First-hand: The first quartz wrist [4] J. Bardeen and W. H. Brattain, “The transistor, watch. Engineering and Technology History to use a microcontroller (a type of IC) semi-conductor triode,” Phys. Rev., vol. 74, no. 2, Wiki. [Online]. Available: http://ethw.org/ and implement into it a program for pp. 230–231, June 1948. First-Hand:The_First_Quartz_Wrist_Watch executing a control function than to [5] R. G. Arns, “The other transistor: Early history [13] History of Intermetall Semiconductors. Radio of the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect Museum. [ Online]. Available: http:// www.radio perform the same operation with a me- transistor,” Eng. Sci. Educ. J., vol. 7, no. 5, pp. museum.org/ forum/history_of_intermetall_ chanical controller. Few devices have 233–240, Oct. 1998. semiconductors.html [6] M. Guarnieri, “The unreasonable accuracy of [14] R. Koch, interview by M. Wolff, interview 460, had such a profound influence on in- Moore’s law,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 10, IEEE History Center, December 10, 1984. dustrial production and social life. no. 1, pp. 40–43, Mar. 2016. [15] M. B. Schiffer, The Portable Radio in American [7] M. Guarnieri, “The alternating evolution of dc Life. Tucson, AZ: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1991. power transmission,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., [16] D. P. Anderson, “Tom Kilburn: A pioneer of vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 60–63, Sept. 2013. computer design,” IEEE Ann. Hist. Comput., References [8] M. Riordan, “How Europe missed the transis- vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 82–86, Apr.–June 2009. [1] M. Guarnieri, “The age of vacuum tubes: Early tor,” IEEE Spectr., vol. 2, no. 11, pp. 52–57, 2005. [17] N. M. Blackman, “The state of digital computer devices and the rise of radio communica- [9] G. K. Teal and J. B. Little, “Growth of germanium technology in Europe,” Commun. ACM, vol. 4, tions,” IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., vol. 6, no. 1, pp. single crystals,” Physical Rev., vol. 78, pp. 647, no. 6, pp. 256–265, June 1961. 41–43, Mar. 2012. 1950.

My View (continued from page 7)

the execution of the computer. The ex- system, and the computerized library thinkers of our time. Harold Grad, an in- ecutable source code or the choices in system, all of which enable their users tellectual descendant of David Hilbert, the UUI are completely flexible or in- to theoretically access an unlimited mentored him in mathematics, and Paul terchangeable in the UPS. An obvious amount of information but have not yet Feyerabend mentored him in philosophy choice of a UUI corresponding directly incorporated the completely automated relating to postmodern science. Addi- to Table 1 can be written for all three lev- capability of the UPS [1]. tionally, Milton Friedman mentored him els of UUI as 0) adenine (A), 1) cytosine in economics relating to deregulating (C), 2) guanine (G), and 3) thymine (T). Conclusions man-made laws. Chitoor V. Ramamoor- And lysine (AAA) can be represented by Mankind owes a debt of gratitude to thy mentored him in software engineer- the integer 0. DNA source code in the Lotfi Askar Zadeh and his dedicated ing. Ta-You Wu, the father of Chinese form of 0, 1, 2, and 3 can be directly fed team of researchers for their pioneer- physics, was advised by his close col- into the UPS to generate the represen- ing research in the field of fuzzy logic. laborator, Tosiyasu L. Kunii, founder of tations of the 64 codons or any protein. Their relentless pursuit has opened the the Department of Information Science A demonstration is available to show eyes of the world to this revolutionary at the University of Tokyo, to collaborate that the UPS can self-generate to form a technology. My friend and colleague with him. Wu took this advice, and they neural network of software cells that can lived a rational but very lonely intellec- worked together, particularly on the increase to an unlimited size or until the tual life, having few colleagues who un- solution of robot touch based on their disk is full. The self-generated network derstood and could discuss the depths newly discovered physics concept of can eventually be developed into an of his thinking. I am grateful that, after jumpulse, a sudden change of force, as electronic brain, with features such as ten years of interaction with him, I fi- Newton’s impulse is a sudden change of HAM. Thus, in the design of a self-gener- nally understand his visionary concept momentum. He solved the problem of ating, completely automated intelligent of fuzzy logic. value posed by his friends Kenneth Ar- system with unlimited complexity, such row and Gerard Debreu. Lotfi A. Zadeh, as the living system and a completely Biography the father of fuzzy logic, guided him to automated computer system, HAM is Hugh Ching (post.science@yahoo realize that “fuzzy is more accurate needed to create HAM. Even today, .com) received his B.S., M.S., and Sc.D. than exact.” the usefulness of HAM, possibly with- degrees from the Massachusetts Insti- out being fully recognized by current tute of Technology, Cambridge. He is the Reference computer designers, has been amply founder of the Knowledge-Oriented So- [1] H. Ching, “Completely automated and self-gen- erating software system,” U.S. Patent 5,485,601, demonstrated by the computerized hy- ciety and the father of postscience. His Jan. 16, 1996. pertext system, the computerized menu mentors include some of the greatest

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