Find information on common issues. Ask questions and find
answers from other users. Suggest a new site feature or
improvement. Check on status of your tickets. On June 30, 1948,
AT&T Bell Labs unveiled the transitor to the world, creating a
spark of explosive economic growth that would lead into the
Information Age. William Shockley led a team of researchers,
including Walter Brattain and John Bardeen, who invented the
device. Like the existing triode vacuum tube device, the
transistor could amplify signals and switch currents on and off,
but the transistor was smaller, cheaper, and more efficient.
Moreover, it could be integrated with millions of other
transistors onto a single chip, creating the integrated circuit
at the heart of modern computers. Today, most transistors are
being manufactured with a minimum feature size of 60-90nm--
roughly 200-300 atoms. As the push continues to make devices
even smaller, researchers must account for quantum mechanical
effects in the device behavior. With fewer and fewer a