The transistor
John BardeenWalter BrattainWilliam Shockley
This page delivers no verdict; it presents claims and evidence with their sources. No theory in science is absolute. Method
For everyone
The first transistor, built at Bell Laboratories in December 1947, was a small semiconductor device that amplifies and switches electrical signals. Today's processors contain tens of billions of transistors on a fingertip-sized chip. The doubling of transistor counts roughly every two years is known as "Moore's law".
For specialists
The first device was a point-contact transistor on germanium; Shockley designed the junction transistor in 1948. The integrated circuit (Kilby 1958, Noyce 1959) and the MOSFET (1959) opened the way to scaling. Moore (1965) predicted component counts doubling every year, later (1975) every two years; whether this trend is slowing as dimensions approach the atomic scale is debated.
Claims
- A semiconductor crystal can replace vacuum tubes as a signal amplifier.[1]
Evidence
Connections
Builds on
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Sources
- Article (1948). The transistor, a semi-conductor triode. Physical Review 74, 230–231DOI 10.1103/PhysRev.74.230archive
- Article (1965). Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics 38(8), 114–117
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Cite this page
Athena contributors. (2026). The transistor. Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/transistor/
@misc{athena_transistor,
title = {The transistor},
author = {{Athena contributors}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/transistor/}},
note = {Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Accessed: 2026-11-01}
}Added: September 27, 2026 · Last changed: September 28, 2026 · Page history