Tech Story: the transistor that changed everything
The transistor that changed everything (Bell Labs, December 1947: Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley).
One tiny part changed everything. 📜⚡
🗓️ December 1947, Bell Labs (New Jersey, USA). Computers ran on vacuum tubes — hot glass tubes that glowed like light bulbs and kept burning out. ENIAC (1945) used about 17,500 of them!
🔬 John Bardeen and Walter Brattain (in William Shockley's team) pressed two gold contacts onto a piece of germanium. A tiny signal went in… and a bigger one came out. The first transistor — a switch and amplifier with no hot glass!
🏅 In 1956 Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
📱 Today one phone chip holds around 15 billion transistors.
From one, to billions.
Read the voiceover (transcript)
- One tiny part changed everything!
- December, nineteen forty-seven, Bell Labs. Computers used hot glass tubes that kept burning out.
- Bardeen and Brattain pressed gold contacts onto germanium: the first transistor!
- It won the Nobel Prize in nineteen fifty-six. Today your phone holds billions!
- From one, to billions!
- Next story: the war of the currents! Follow for more!
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