A Very Early Conception of a Solid State Device Invented at Bell
Telephone Laboratories between 1945 and 1948, many consider the
transistor to be one of the most important inventions in 20th
century technology. The story of the first working transistor
underscores the power modern industrial laboratories have had to
coordinate scientific discovery in the pursuit of technological
breakthroughs. It is about great intellectual leaps and driving
ambition. But while the story has been told and retold to
scientists and engineers for years, only a small circle of
history buffs and scholars know that the pursuit of the solid-
state amplifier has an even longer history than the transistor.
This quest dates back to 1924–1925, and the work of Julius Edgar
Lilienfeld. The Dawn of the Electronics Age Though Karl Braun’s
cathode ray tube (1897) and Ambrose Fleming’s vacuum tube
rectifier (1904) marked the beginning of the electronics age,
Lee de Forest’s triode actually propelled electronics forward.
By placing a wire “grid