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"