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.
Rufus P. Turner
Turner was involved with creating the 1N34A germanium diode at Sylvania in the 1940s. He began experimenting with germanium transistors soon after their invention in 1947. In 1949, before transistors were commercially available, he published the popular article "Build a Transistor", considered a "benchmark publication" in amateur radio. In January 1950, after commercial units were released, he published "A Crystal Receiver with Transistor Amplifier" in "Radio and Television News", along with plans for a three-transistor radio circuit. These plans – printed four years before the Regency TR-1 (the first commercial transistor radio) – were the first time most amateur radio operators were introduced to transistors as viable radio components. He continued development of his pocket-size radios as superior transistors became available, culminating in the 'widely read' "Transistor Portable with a "Punch"", an 'ambitious' four-transistor non-superheterodyne AM radio published in "Popular Electronics" in 1956.