Inventions & Discoveries · Communication and computing
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device that amplifies or switches electrical signals and power; the first working one, a point-contact transistor, was invented in 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker invented the point-contact transistor independently in Paris in 1948. Smaller than vacuum tubes and needing less power, transistors made smaller and cheaper radios, calculators and computers possible, and the MOSFET, invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960, became the most widely used type.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 1947
- Where
- Murray Hill, New Jersey
- Credited to
- John Bardeen · Walter Brattain · William Shockley · United States
Also arose independentlyParis (Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker) (1948)
NoteThe concept of a field-effect transistor had been patented earlier by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (Canada 1925, United States 1926 and 1928) and by Oskar Heil (1934), but no working device was built then, and Bell Labs' lawyers advised against naming Shockley inventor of a field-effect patent because the idea was not new.
Mentioned in 1 profile
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Transistor. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/transistor
- MLA
- “Transistor.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/transistor. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Transistor.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/transistor.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Transistor’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/transistor (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻