ABSTRACT
Just as the discovery of germ theory revolutionized medicine, the discovery of the transistor (and the transistor effect) revolutionized electronics.
Transistors have had a greater impact on the electronics industry than any other innovation to date-with thousands of millions now manufactured each year. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, who were developing the work of the U.S. physicist William Shockley, first invented transistors at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the U.S. in 1948. Their useful qualities were immediately apparent. Transistors perform many of the functions of thermionic valves (vacuum tubes), but have the advantage of greater reliability, long life, compactness, and instantaneous action (no warming-up necessary). Widely used in most electronics equipment including portable radios and television, computers, and satellites, they are the basis of the integrated circuit (silicon chip).
