Fifty Years Of The Transistor : The Beginning Of Silicon Technology

Abstract

The first years have been somewhat controversial as to who invented the transistor. There seems to be no convergence in the disagreement as to whether Shockley or Bardeen was most responsible for the discovery of the "transistor effect." Anything that I might say would not change any existing beliefs. I will give a more complete account of the next five or more years which accounted for much of the technology for the integrated circuit, and which has been largely disregarded in histories of the integrated circuit. The time from 1947 until 1952 was used to study the basic Physical behavior of germanium and silicon.