The first wave of semiconductor companies started in April 1952 when Bell Labs held its second transistor symposium for its transistor patent licensees, which was attended by representatives from some 40 companies. After the symposium, most of those companies started manufacturing bipolar point-contact transistors within mere months or a couple of years, and many became successful commercial semiconductor vendors. A few of those vendors – including Infineon (formerly Siemens), NXP (formerly Philips), and Texas Instruments – continue to make semiconductors today. (I discussed this history in a 7-part series about the early transistor makers in EEJournal. See the reference section of … Read More → "A Brief History of the MOS transistor, Part 1: Early Visionaries"

When I wrote the initial six parts of this series on early transistor makers, I worked from a list of initial companies that made transistors using the early Bell Labs transistor patents. That list of attendees to the April, 1952 Transistor Symposium at Bell Labs came from Bo Lojek’s book, History of Semiconductor Engineering, which is an encyclopedic history of semiconductors. Another book, A History of Engineering and … Read More → "The Transistor at 75: The First Makers, Part 7"