Talk:History of the transistor

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The improvement in design ... to complete up untill ? 1970 ? 1980 ?

Contents 1 Discution about history taken from parent Transistor article 2 Transistor observed in 1910s ??? 3 Interesting! Evidence of a Bell Labs' coverup 4 Oscar Heil 5 Transistron 6 Problems with part of development 7 Etymology

[edit] Discution about history taken from parent Transistor article

If Lilienfeld patented the transistor in 1928, how come it was not used immediately? Military uses must be pretty obvious, etc. Also very hard to believe that no US electric industry giant realized its potential. Imagine where computing would be today if those twenty years from 1928 to 1947 were not wasted on vacuum tubes and clicking relays! We could already have true 3-law robots. 195.70.32.136 09:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know all the details of Lilienfelds work, but I don't think he made anything that actually worked. At the minimum, I don't think he had the theoretical foundation developed by Shockley. Lots of people had transistor like ideas, but at the end of the day, Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain developed a real device and later refined it to a level that few could have predicted. Also, keep in mind that quantum mechanics was still in it's infancy in the early part of the century and the sophisticated techniques needed to grow high purity materials were not a trivial matter. Look at it this way: if you tried, you could build a home made vacuum tube today that works reasonably well. Building a transistor that works at all is much harder. Get a copy of Crystal Fire, it's a fantastic read.

As far as vacuum tubes go, they were cheaper and more reliable than transistors for decades. We still use vacuum tubes today, but not for small signal applications. Most TVs still use CRTs and microwave ovens use magnetrons. Many transmitters still use Klystrons and power companies probably continue to use Ignitrons. CRTs will probably be replaced completely in the coming years, but a cheap, one kilowatt, microwave transistor is a tall order. Madhu 23:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know all the details of Lilienfelds work, but I don't think he made anything that actually worked. That seems a bit amazing. You really think that Lilienfeld patented those very detailed devices, spending significant funding for three separate patents ...but without ever building any of them?!!! Really? If so, this Lilienfeld must be a lunatic. Ah, I found a reference that suggests you're wrong: semiconductor specialist Dr. Harry E. Stockman in a 1981 letter to Wireless World magazine: "(Lilienfeld) created his non-tube device around 1923, with one foot in Canada and the other in the USA, and the date of his Canadian patent application was October 1925. Later American patents followed, which should have been well known to the Bell Labs patent office. Lilienfeld demonstrated his remarkable tubeless radio receiver on many occasions, but God help a fellow who at that time threatened the reign of the tube." So it might seem amazing that Lilienfeld's transistor was ignored for twenty years, but only if you aren't aware of the stiff resistance we humans have to new ideas, and the large barriers we erect to slow them down. Look at the embarassing story of S. Ovshinsky's amorphous semiconductors, their total rejection by the USA sci-tech community, and the multi-billion dollar industry they spawned ...in Japan.--Wjbeaty 01:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

That's very interesting, if true, that Lilienfeld was able to making a working semiconductor amplifier device. Conventional received wisdom says no, like this recent book. It would be great if someone could turn up a verifiable source to the contrary. Dicklyon 03:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

These books and articles seem very strange to me, claiming knowledge about Lilienfeld's devices for which I've never seen evidence. From my past reading about Lilienfeld, the only evidence leads me to conclude that we don't know the details of Lilienfeld's accomplishments. If true, then nobody has any right to say that he never build a transistor, or to say that he build non-working devices. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If evidence is lacking, we must conclude that we don't know,. We're not allowed to leap to unwarrented and unsupported facts such as statement that "his devices didn't work," etc.

Regarding Shockley and the theoretical basis: as I understand it, the Germanium transistor came first, the theoretical stuff second, and Shockley had little role in the initial discovery. The two guys who built that razor-slit-gold-foil-contact transistor had been ordered by Shockley to stop pursuing any such work since it obviously wouldn't lead to the FET they were trying to invent. They were proceeding anyway, while keeping their equipment on a rolling cart stored in a closet away from Shockley's eyes. Once their investigations resulted in a working device, their boss took over the project and developed the theory as well as the grown-junction improved transistors. (Sounds very similar to Townes' story about how the first Laser was developed, eh?) The moral: you can discover the transistor if you just dedicate significant time looking for it. The advanced theory is added later, and only gives improvements.

On the other hand, the Bell Labs group ran up against a major barrier in their efforts to create FETs: surface states which act to shield the conductive channel from the effects of the gate voltage. Perhaps these authors mentioning Lilienfeld conclude that, since the "surface states problem" is such a major barrier for Bell Labs, that Lilienfeld must have encountered the same problem. Perhaps they assume that Lilienfeld dishonestly pretended to have working devices, while in reality he failed in the same way that Bell Labs initially failed. If this is the basis of these authors ideas, then their ideas are pure speculation, and they're dishonest if they don't label them as such. Or maybe I see those authors as more intelligent than they actually are; maybe one of them decided to claim in writing that Lilienfeld had no working hardware ...and all the other authors just copied the first guy without thinking too much about it. But this is science, and Nature can cut through all the speculative BS: if we build a Lilienfeld transistor as detailed in his patents, and it gives useful gain, then all these authors are wrong. Here's a major possibility I saw in some article long ago: Lilienfeld's devices were not FETs at all, but instead were grown-junction NPN transistors created when the material of the gate-conductor diffused into the semiconductor layer and reversed its doping. This would suggest that Lilienfeld could have built a genuine transistor radio in 1925 ...but that he didn't have an accurate theoretical description of his devices. As with the Bell Labs transistor, the working hardware comes first, and only later do scientists extend physics theory in order to explain it. Or perhaps Lilienfeld behaved as an inventor rather than a physicist by getting "dollar signs in the eyes" and keeping his work secret rather than publishing all the details in physics journals. --Wjbeaty 22:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transistor observed in 1910s ???

According to Bell System Memorial there were accounts in British magazines from the 1910s about Russian ship board operators achieving gain from "cat's whisker" diodes with two whiskers. (Unsigned) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Transisto (talk • contribs) 01:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting! Evidence of a Bell Labs' coverup

In 1981 the semiconductor physicist H. E. Stockman said "Lilienfeld demonstrated his remarkable tubeless radio receiver on many occasions, but God help a fellow who at that time threatened the reign of the tube." See Bell Labs Memorial: Who really invented the transistor?, starting at "Oscillating Crystals".

Here's a paper which details some history of the laboratory testing of Lilienfeld's patent claims by others: The Other Transistor: early history of the MOSFET See pp235-236

Briefly:

In 1964 a physicist V. Bottom asked in Physics Today magazine whether these transistors worked, and J. B. Johnson of Bell Labs responded saying that he'd tested them and they didn't work. This probably is the origin of the story that Lilienfeld never had any working hardware.

Then in 1995 R. G. Arns found a 1948 legal deposition by Johnson which said the opposite: that Bell Labs back then had a project to test Lilienfeld's transistors, and before Johnson took over the project, Shockely and Pearson had built a variation of Lilienfeld's aluminum oxide MOSFET from his patent and found only an 11% modulation index, but that "useful power output is substantial"! To me it appears as if Johnson, being with Bell Labs, perhaps had an agenda to promote his own company's discovery while misleading the physics community about Lilienfeld's. After Shockley/Pearson's success, Johnson had tested the other two Lilienfeld patents and was unable to replicate them ...so Johnson was only dishonest in his covering up the fact that Bell Labs well knew that Lilienfeld had something real. Between these times B. Crawford in 1991 built successful but unstable Lilienfeld MOSFETs and saw evidence that Lilienfeld had done the same. In 1995 J. Ross built stable Lilienfeld MOSFETs. In addition to all this, a 1934 patent by Oskar Heil exists for another MOSFET.

The author makes a very telling statement about the honesty of Shockley et. al.: "Published scientific, technical, and historical papers by these Bell scientists never mention either Lilienfeld’s or Heil’s prior work." --Wjbeaty 03:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I had added that Arns ref to the John B. Johnson article a while back. It's an interesting story, but doesn't really get close to being conclusive about whether Lilienfeld ever made it work. As for the coverup, that was the Bell way with lots of tech advances, not specific to Shockley. I can provide a copy if anyone wants and doesn't have the access. Dicklyon 04:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oscar Heil

Is anyone aware of details of this claim about Dr Oscar Heil patenting the FET in germany in 1934?--Light current 17:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

• Best I can do is this link JFETS: THE NEW FRONTIER wherein it states: "Field-effect transistors (FETs) have been around for a long time; in fact, they were invented, at least theoretically, before the bipolar transistors. The basic principle of the FET has been known since J.E. Lilienfeld’s US patent in 1930, and Oscar Heil described the possibility of controlling the resistance in a semiconducting material with an electric field in a British patent in 1935." DV8 2XL 18:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I forgot to mention here that in June 2006 I made an article on Oskar Heil, including a copy of his patent drawing of a FET-like structure. Dicklyon 06:57, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transistron

The Wikimedia Help Desk received advice from an expert in the field that the article in IEEE Spectrum How Europe missed the Transistor contains considerable errors which have been placed in the Wikipedia article. The IEEE apparently has been asked to correct the record:

Specifically, the informed source says:

"Your page about transistors contains an abstract of the Spectrum article and should be reviewed as follows: The correct term is "transistron". The French "Compagnie des Freins et Signaux Westinghouse" was not a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric. The amplifier developed by Welker and Mataré was not a point contact device. It was based on the minority carrier injection process."

Capitalistroadster 07:33, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The mistakes are not the IEEEs but mine; though the transistron (correct spelling) did have point contacts and all bipolar transistors rely on minority carriers. The French company must at least have been an affilate of the Westinghouse (railway) brake company. --Wtshymanski 03:47, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with part of development

Consider the following paragraph: "Brattain started working on building such a device, and tantalizing hints of amplification continued to appear as the team worked on the problem. One day the system would work and the next it wouldn't. In one instance a non-working system started working when placed in water. The two eventually developed a new branch of quantum mechanics known as surface physics to account for the behaviour."

It seems unclear to simply put in the term 'team' without specifying the team members & where they're working, as I see no mention of these things in the preceding paragraphs.. Later, "The two eventually developed... " - which two? Brattain & somebody, or 2 completely new somebodies? I'd like someone to write this paragraph more clearly, please. -- tharkun860 July 5, 2005 01:46 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

the article currently says transistor means both transfer resistor and transfer varistor. the more correct one appears to be the latter. it might be worthwhile to note in the article that many people believe transistor means transfer resistor and it isn't far from the truth since a varistor is a type of variable resistor. but might as well have wikipedia be accurate here. --Rmalloy 02:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, neither is quite right. Crystal Fire says

Brattain explained the problem and asked for advice. "Pierce knew that the point-contact amplifier was the dual of a vacuum tube, circuit-wise," he recalled. An electrical engineer, Pierce recognized the vacuum tube is a voltage-driven device, in which an input voltage controls the output current; in a point-contact amplifier, by contrast, an input current signal controls the output current. After thinking it over quietly for a moment, he observed that the relevant parameter of a vacuum tube was its "trans-conductance." Next, he mentioned the electrical dual of this property, or "trans-resistance." Then he put everything together, suddenly uttering a brand new word: "transistor." "Pierce, that is it!" exclaimed Brattain.

John Robinson Pierce also wrote an article on the naming of the transistor for the Proceedings of the IEEE, but I can't find mine right now; here's the abstract. He is also quoted on this PBS web page:

"The way I provided the name, was to think of what the device did. And at that time, it was supposed to be the dual of the vacuum tube. The vacuum tube had transconductance, so the transistor would have 'transresistance.' And the name should fit in with the names of other devices, such as varistor and thermistor. And. . . I suggested the name 'transistor.'"

I knew JRP for a long time before I knew he was the guy who named the transistor. It wasn't something he talked about, as he was always too busy with new ideas. Dicklyon 03:21, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, the BTL transistor naming ballot memo of May 28, 1948, which I believe is reproduced in JRP's article in Proc. IEEE, and which I happen to have a scan of from some place on the web, says

Transistor. This is an abbreviated combination of the words "transconductance" or "transfer" and "varistor". The device logically belongs in the varistor family, and has the transconductance or transfer impedance of a device having gain, so that this combination is descriptive.

So people who cast a vote for that name with this memo probably did think it meant something like transfer varistor. But if we're going to say that, we should probably tell a more complete story. Dicklyon 03:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)