1948 · First Commercial Transistor · Work 817 of 1,871
Small transistors of 1948 on black velvet on a laboratory bench of an American valve factory, each a brass cylinder about one centimetre long wrapped in a band of yellowed cloth tape, two short metal pins at one end face, one held in watchmaker's tweezers by a hand in a white coat sleeve, two more lying on the velvet, an open tin box with several more, a watchmaker's screwdriver, a magnifier lamp on a jointed arm shining down, a grey-green steel instrument case soft beside, rows of glass valves soft in the background, light from factory skylights.
What it was used for
Raytheon's CK703 was a germanium point-contact transistor of PNP type: 2 sharpened metal points pressed onto a small germanium block. Per Jack Ward's accompanying note in the Computer History Museum catalogue entry it was the first transistor sold commercially, announced in late 1948, and probably only a few hundred were sold. The catalogue entry describes the 8 units held as developmental samples without type marking, possibly CK703 or CK716, and suggests they served an engineering study to document performance characteristics.
What was new
What was new about the CK703 was no principle but an order number: the laboratory's point-contact arrangement was offered as catalogue goods. The barb is in the catalogue entry itself: commercial use stayed limited by severe performance and manufacturing difficulties, the quantity at a few hundred, and the 8 pieces in the museum cannot even be identified for certain as CK703 or CK716 because they carry only a number and no type marking.
What the sources leave open: The years do not conflict, they refer to different steps: the accompanying note in the CHM catalogue dates the announcement to late 1948, the Transistor Museum dates Raytheon's first commercial marketing of the CK703 to 1949. Neither source names a price. The figure "a few hundred" is an estimate in the catalogue entry, not a production statement by Raytheon.