Throughout the history of the transistor technological revolution, The Electrochemical Society has served as a platform for key inventors to present their research.
In December of 1947—75 years ago—William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invented the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. The three men shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics “for research on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect.” This invention heralded the modern electronic age. According to science historian Michael Riordan, “[The transistor] has enabled this global civilization. I would put it on the [same] level as fire, in terms of its importance to what modern life is like today.” In a recent ECS Interface article, Hiroshi Iwai and Durga Misra describe the process of the technological development behind the invention of the transistor, and discuss the meaning and impact of its invention on human history.