1948 · European Point-Contact Transistor · Work 816 of 1,871
An experimental set-up of 1948 on a workbench in a converted house in a suburb of Paris, a small brass base with a matt grey germanium chip five millimetres across, above it two needle-fine metal points on two small adjusting arms with knurled screws, a magnifying lens on a jointed arm above them, beside it an oscilloscope in a grey steel case with a round screen showing a single bent curve, a row of small cartridges in a wooden strip, a small glass bottle of resin, hands in a grey work coat sleeve at an adjusting arm, a tall window with glazing bars, winter morning light, a tiled stove soft behind.
What it was used for
Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker built the germanium point-contact amplifier at Compagnie des Freins et Signaux Westinghouse, a Westinghouse subsidiary; per the account in IEEE Spectrum their laboratory was in a stone house of 2 storeys in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris. The devices were used as amplifiers in the French telephone network, first on the Paris-Limoges line; Thomas, the PTT secretary, also demonstrated them in radio receivers. Mataré later showed Shockley and Brattain telephone amplifiers that reached as far as Algiers. The same laboratory's germanium rectifier production reached thousands of units a month.
What was new
Per the Computer History Museum the two independently made a germanium amplifier with 2 point contacts in early 1948 while studying a phenomenon Mataré called "interference". The company filed the French patent application on 13 August, under a title beginning "Nouveau système cristallin à plusieurs électrodes" - that is, after Bell's announcement of June 1948. The barb: the technical advantage went unused. After Hiroshima France turned to nuclear physics, support waned in the early 1950s, Welker went to Siemens in 1951 and Mataré founded Intermetall in 1952 - and the industry moved on to the junction transistor and to silicon.
What the sources leave open: IEEE Spectrum names 13 August as the day of filing with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce; the Computer History Museum says only that the filing came after Bell's announcement of June 1948. That is not a contradiction. None of the sources opened gives a unit figure for the transistron itself; the thousands per month refer to germanium rectifiers.
Connections
Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.
Parallel toHeard and Seen1947The Computer History Museum calls the 1948 point-contact transistor of Mataré and Welker in Paris an independent invention: the two learned of Bell Labs' similar semiconductor amplifier only a month after their reproducible results of June 1948. Both came from German wartime radar work: Mataré built silicon and germanium rectifiers at Telefunken, Welker purified germanium in Munich.Source: Computer History Museum, The Silicon Engine: 1948 - The European Transistor Invention