History of hearing aids
The development of transistors in 1948 by Bell Laboratories led to major improvements to the hearing aid. The transistor was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley. Transistors were created to replace vacuum tubes; they were small, required less battery power and had less distortion and heat than their predecessor. These vacuum tubes were typically hot and fragile, so the transistor was the ideal replacement.The 1952 Sonotone 1010 used a transistor stage along with vacuum tubes, to extend battery life. The size of these transistors led to developments in miniature, carbon microphones. These microphones could be mounted on various items, even eyeglasses. In 1951, Raytheon manufactured the transistor and was one of the first companies to mass-produce transistors to throughout America. Raytheon realized that their hearing aid only lasted short-term and began to sell the vacuum-tube hearing aids again along with transistor hearing aids.
Insulated-gate bipolar transistor
There are two important device concepts concerning IGBTs. First one is the device concept discovered by J. D. Plummer in 1978. US Patent Re.33209 was issued for the device concept. The device proposed by J. D. Plummer is the same structure as a thyristor with a MOS gate. J. D. Plummer discovered and proposed that the device can be used as a transistor although the device operates as a thyristor in higher current density level. J. D. Plummer reported this fact in his technical paper: "A MOS-Controlled Triac Devices" B.W. Scharf and J.D. Plummer, 1978 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, SESSION XVI FAM 16.6. The device proposed by J. D. Plummer is referred, here, as “Plummer’s device.” On the other hand, Hans W. Becke invented and proposed, in 1980, another new device in which the thyristor action is completely eliminated under any device operating conditions although the basic device structure is the same as that proposed by J. D. Plummer. The device invented by Hans W. Becke is referred, here, as “Becke’s device” and is described in US Patent 4364073. The difference between “Plummer’s device” and “Becke’s device” is that “Plummer’s device” has the mode of thyristor action in its operation range and “Becke’s device” never has the mode of thyristor action in its entire operation range. This is a critical point, because the thyristor action is the same as so-called “latch-up.” “Latch-up” is the main cause of fatal device failure. Thus, theoretically, “Plummer’s device” never realizes a rugged or strong power device which has a large safe operating area. The large safe operating area can be achieved only after “latch-up” is completely suppressed and eliminated in the entire device operation range. Hence, the invention of the device by Hans W. Becke is decisively more important. And, this is the real IGBT. However, the Becke's patent (US Patent 4364073) did not disclose any measures to realize actual devices.