Transistor radio
A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver that uses transistor-based circuitry. Following their development in 1954, made possible by the invention of the transistor in 1947, they became the most popular electronic communication device in history, with billions manufactured during the 1960s and 1970s. Their pocket size sparked a change in popular music listening habits, allowing people to listen to music anywhere they went. Beginning in the 1980s, however, cheap AM transistor radios were superseded by devices with higher audio quality such as portable CD players, personal audio players, boomboxes, and (eventually) smartphones, some of which contain radios themselves.
Texas Instruments
In January 1954 Morris Tanenbaum at Bell Labs created the first workable silicon transistor. This work was reported in the spring of 1954, at the IRE off-the-record conference on Solid State Devices, and was later published in the Journal of Applied Physics. Working independently in April 1954, Gordon Teal at TI created the first commercial silicon transistor and tested it on April 14, 1954. On May 10, 1954, at the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) National Conference on Airborne Electronics in Dayton, OH,Teal presented a paper: "Some Recent Developments in Silicon and Germanium Materials and Devices,".