Last November, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the announcement by Bell Telephone Labs (BTL) of the transistor’s birth. Many articles about the early transistor developments have appeared, but I started to wonder about the earliest commercial transistor vendors. In Part 1 of this article, I discussed an incomplete list of attendees at a transistor symposium that was held at BTL in 1952. That list was compiled some years ago by Bo Lojek: … Read More → "The Transistor at 75: The First Makers, Part 5"

Last November, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the announcement by Bell Telephone Labs (BTL) of the transistor’s birth. Many articles about the early transistor developments have appeared, but I started to wonder about the earliest commercial transistor vendors. In Part 1 of this article, I discussed an incomplete list of attendees at a transistor symposium that was held at BTL in 1952. That was list compiled some years ago by Bo Lojek: … Read More → "The Transistor at 75: The First Makers, Part 4"

Last November, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the announcement by Bell Telephone Labs (BTL) of the transistor’s birth. Many articles about the early transistor developments have appeared, but I started to wonder about the earliest commercial transistor vendors. In Part 1 of this article, I discussed an incomplete list of attendees at a transistor symposium that was held at BTL in 1952. That was compiled some years ago by Bo Lojek:

1.       Arnold Engineering
2.       Automatic Electric</ … Read More → "The Transistor at 75: The First Makers, Part 3"

Part 1 of this article discussed the spark that ignited the commercial semiconductor industry. It was the 1952 Transistor Symposium conducted by Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL). A book published by BTL called A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: Electronics Technology (1925-1975) stated that twenty-six domestic and fourteen foreign transistor licensees of the BTL transistor patents attended the symposium. That’s a total of 40 licensees. However, Bo Lojek’s book titled History of Semiconductor Engineering listed only 34 companies in attendance: … Read More → "The Transistor at 75: The First Makers, Part 2"

Last November, our industry celebrated the 75th anniversary of the announcement by Bell Telephone Labs (BTL) of the transistor’s birth. I knew that many facets of the transistor’s invention would be well covered so I didn’t plan to add an article to this pile because I didn’t feel I had much to improve upon what would be written. However, I did read several of these articles including the excellent article titled “The Surface State Job,” written … Read More → "The Transistor at 75: The First Makers, Part 1"