Transistor
The transistor is the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices, and is ubiquitous in modern electronic systems. Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented a field-effect transistor in 1926 but it was not possible to actually construct a working device at that time. The first practically implemented device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by American physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley. The transistor revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and computers, among other things. The transistor is on the list of IEEE milestones in electronics, and Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement.
Reading Works
In 1951, just four years after the invention of the transistor by Bell Laboratories, the Allentown Plant was opened to manufacture the first transistors. Jack Morton was assigned to develop transistors for manufacture. He had been responsible for inventing and providing the military with microwave components during WWII and knew how to get an idea from the lab, into production, and into the field. He established a system of branch labs at several Western Electric plants, consisting of teams of Bell Labs scientists and engineers focused on production engineering and acting as liaison with their colleagues back in Murray Hill. Morton fine-tuned this approach at the new Western Electric plant in Allentown, Pa., which produced electronic devices and components for the Bell System. He set up a Bell Labs semiconductor development group there and put Eugene Anderson in charge.