Did Bell Labs really invent the transistor?

[lecter]

It's a question I've been trying to answer after a friend of mine teased me about it...it would seem that there's a different story behind the invention of the transistor, not just the public-knowledge one about the three guys at Bell. Does any of you guys know anything on the matter? So far my virtual searches have been fruitless, maybe real-life people know better

[Brian Ellis]

As far as I'm aware, Shockley et al. were the first to obtain amplification from a three-pole semiconductor device, the TRANSconductance resISTOR.

That having been said, they were certainly not the first to obtain amplification from a semiconductor device. This honour goes to a Soviet guy, one Oleg Losev in 1922. He discovered that a zincite crystal diode can be biased to produce a negative resistance of about -1 to -2 kilohms, which he used for both amplification and oscillation at frequencies up to ~5 MHz. Losev died in January 1942 in the siege of Leningrad, refusing to leave because he was doing some promising experiments with silicon. A colleague claimed that he mentioned a three-electrode device but all his papers were lost. It is not impossible that Losev was the real inventor of the transistor, but this can never be proven one way or another.

[schmosef]

An interesting question...

If someone invents something, but, for whatever reason, doesn't get to share it with the rest of the world (so that there is no direct benefit to his discovery), should he be credited with the invention? Or should the person/team, working completely independantly, who do get to share it, get the ultimate credit?

(I'm assuming of course, based on Brian's explaination, that this Oleg guy's work didn't directly impact the work of Shockley's team.)

It's kind of a tree falling in the forest type of question. If nobody heard it, does it matter that it fell?

[Umfriend]

It does when it hit you on the head, which was wearing a Sennheiser PXC-250.

Seriously, one should get credit for discovering it, the other as well but also for the fact that it actually got anywhere.

[lecter]

Excellent insights on Losev, Brian! I found his work related to the notion, but didn't know about the human aspects involved...

I guess that the short story is that people came close before Shockley & Co., but never quite close enough.

[Jammrock]

Another briliant mind lost to war Granted that happened several decades ago, but still, I wonder how much more advanced the world would be if World War I and II never happened.

The flip side arguement would be, war does cause a rapid advance in more than just warfare (penicillin comes to mind).

Too much to ponder for early Monday morning...

Jammrock

[rylan]

There was an article in IEEE Spectrum magazine about this recently. I'll take a look when I get home and see if its on the web too.

[gt40]

heard this story too.
Didn't he have something to do with LED's as well?

[Brian Ellis]

I think you may be confusing him with Henry J. Round, who discovered LED effects in carborundum in 1907. Ironically, his first LEDs were blue (he obtained red and yellow later), because blue was the colour that baffled the production of high-efficiency LEDs until Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Chemicals hit on the solution in 1992 with a GaN junction, although carborundum is still used for low light levels. It is true the Oleg Losev did confirm Round's discovery in the 1920s, but I don't have details. He could not claim anything new.

[Ribbit]

Everyone knows Bell Labs ripped the technology from the UFO which crashed at Roswell...

[rylan]

Its in the May 2004 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine. According to them it as Shockley's group at Bell Labs. In Jan 1954 Morris Tanenbaum fabricated a silicon transistor, but TI made the first announcement a couple months later through their lab... so it was actually to seperate labs working on the same project and came up with the silicon transistor a couple months apart.

However, the first working junction transistor was created in April 1950 at Bell Labs by using a germanium crystal. This also wasn't announced until July 1951.

[Brian Ellis]

Yes, but Shockley et al. had obtained amplification with a germanium point contact transistor in December 1947. I think I read about it in autumn 1948: I was a first year electronics engineering student at the time. Of course, we were stupified. I don't think I actually handled a transistor until 1954. These were still germanium point contact types and were both horrendously expensive and horrendously delicate. I still have a small transistor signal generator (1 kHz 0 dBm output into a 600 ohm phone line, which we used for field calibration of transmitters) I designed ca. 1955. It still works, despite having 2 PC Ge transistors! I made 2 of them and the estimated cost at the time was about GBP 200 each, which would just about buy a Ford Popular! Those were the days!