The Transistor Turns 60

Sixty years ago, three scientists came up with the solid state transistor, the mechanism at the heart of all computer chips and digital processors.

Sixty years ago, three U.S. scientists lead by the controversial William Shockley at Bell Labs came up with the first solid state transistor. Transistors are the fundamental switches on all solid-state silicon chips: they can be switched on or off—representing the primordial zero and one. By combining transistors, the devices can be made to perform high-speed calculations.

The group’s goal had been to come up with a technology that could replace the notoriously fragile (and large) vacuum tubes used in signal amplification applications. It took a while for the technology to be refined and appear in commercial products: the first commercial application was a hearing aid that came on the market in 1952. Today, evolutions of their invention power everything from MP3 players to mobile phones to digital cameras to wristwatches to traffic lights to—well, darn near anything. Just displaying this text no doubt involved millions of solid-state transistors.

The product that launched the transistor into popular culture still bears its name: the transistor radio. The 1950s equivalent of an iPod, the transistor radio was the smallest and most affordable receiver in the world to date: although the term “affordable” is relative: in 1955, a Regency TR1 cost $49.95. That’s almost equivalent to $1,000 today.

In the 1960’s, technologies developed in part from Shockley’s further research led to the development of integrated chips (ICs), which enabled several transistors to be build at the same time on a single wafer of silicon. The process has since been refined such that the such of transistors is now measured in nanometers, and individual chips can contain millions of transistors.

Although Shockley’s contributions to modern technology were substantial—some consider him one of the most important scientific minds in history, and his research was fundamental to creating the core companies of today’s Silicon Valley—his legacy is clouded by controversial work later in life that focused on population science and eugenics. Shockley died in 1989 from prostate cancer.