Heard and Seen

1947 · Point-Contact Transistor · Work 815 of 1,871

A research laboratory in New Jersey on a December afternoon, on a wooden bench a clear plastic triangle two centimetres high with gold foil along its lower edge, pressed by a springy metal arm onto grey germanium, a chrome desk microphone, a black Bakelite headset, an oscilloscope, its round green screen showing one smooth wave, seated at the bench the man, a man of forty-five, dark brushed-back hair, short moustache, rolled-up white shirt sleeves, dark tie, speaking into the microphone, his face toward the camera, in the foreground five men in dark suits seen from directly behind, faces turned fully away.

Who
Walter Houser Brattain (1902–1987) was an experimental physicist and one of the three inventors of the transistor. Born on 10 February 1902 in Amoy, China, he grew up on a ranch in Washington State, studied at Whitman College and earned his doctorate at the University of Minnesota in 1929. That same year he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, where his main subject was the surface properties of solids; in the Second World War he worked on submarine detection. After the war he teamed up with the theorist John Bardeen: Bardeen did the theory, Brattain built whatever was needed. In December 1947 this produced the point-contact transistor, the first solid-state amplifier. In 1956 Brattain, Bardeen and William Shockley shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. With Gerald Pearson, Brattain wrote a history of semiconductor research that credited J. C. Bose with priority for the crystal detector. He left Bell Labs in 1967 to teach at Whitman College, his alma mater, and died of Alzheimer's disease in 1987. The transistor became the basic building block of electronics, from the hearing aid to the electronic telephone exchange.
The moment
On the afternoon of 16 December 1947 Bardeen and Brattain had amplified a signal with a crystal for the first time. Brattain had cemented gold foil onto a plastic wedge and slit it at the tip with a razor blade, leaving two contacts a paper's width apart; a spring pressed the wedge onto germanium. A week later, on Tuesday 23 December, a snowy day in Murray Hill, New Jersey, they showed the invention to a group of senior scientists and managers. They switched it in and out of an audio circuit so that everyone could hear the amplification, with none of the warm-up time of a vacuum tube. Brattain wrote in his notebook that the circuit was actually spoken over and could be heard and seen on the oscilloscope. Shockley called it a magnificent Christmas present.
The other side
Shockley, the group's leader, was not one of the inventors; he had only offered suggestions. Shortly after the demonstration he called Bardeen and Brattain in separately and told them that sometimes the people who do the work don't get the credit for it. Brattain replied that there was enough glory in it for everybody. Shockley went off to work alone at home and in January 1948 conceived the junction transistor, which became the dominant building block. Orders came down that Bardeen and Brattain were not to be photographed without Shockley; the publicity photos show him front and centre.

What the sources leave open: Who spoke into the microphone on 23 December, and what was said, nobody remembers; the picture puts Brattain at the microphone. The room in Murray Hill is not described; the men seen from behind are typified, Bardeen among them without a face. Brattain's face follows the public-domain Nobel photograph of 1956; in the picture he is nine years younger.

Connections

Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.

  1. Follows fromThe Radar Crystal1942The first point-contact transistor was built with a slab of polycrystalline germanium from Purdue - the very material that Lark-Horovitz's group had developed from 1942 for the high-frequency rectifiers and mixers of radar receivers. Brattain used that pure Purdue germanium in December 1947.Source: E. E. Haller: Germanium - From Its Discovery to SiGe Devices (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) · Computer History Museum, The Silicon Engine: 1941 - Semiconductor diode rectifiers serve in WW II
  2. Follows fromThe Cracked Silicon Rod1940On 6 March 1940 Brattain saw Ohl demonstrate the silicon rod in Kelly's office and alone offered a tentative explanation: the current arose at a barrier. Briefed on Ohl's work in March 1945, Shockley asked: "Did you ever think that if you put a point contact at the barrier". His field-effect idea stimulated the programme that led to the point-contact transistor of December 1947.Source: Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson: The origins of the pn junction, IEEE Spectrum, June 1997

Further reading

Sources