How did the transistor get invented?
In 1947, three scientists at Bell Labs were trying to solve a problem that annoyed everyone who used a telephone. Phone calls traveling long distances got quieter and quieter, like whispers fading down a hallway. The only fix was a device called a vacuum tube — a glass bulb the size of a lightbulb that boosted the signal back up. But vacuum tubes were hot, fragile, and power-hungry. Thousands of them filled entire rooms just to keep the phone network running.
The three scientists — John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley — wanted to make something smaller and cooler that could do the same job. They focused on a material called a semiconductor, which got its name because it sort of conducts electricity, but not very well. Silicon and germanium were semiconductors. Most materials are either great conductors (like copper wire) or terrible ones (like rubber). Semiconductors were the interesting in-between.
