Who invented the transistor?

Who invented the transistor?

Transistors were invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in 1947 by three brilliant US physicists: John Bardeen (1908–1991), Walter Brattain (1902–1987), and William Shockley (1910–1989).
         The team, led by Shockley, had been trying to develop a new kind of amplifier for the US telephone system—but what they actually invented turned out to have much more widespread applications. Bardeen and Brattain made the first practical transistor (known as a point-contact transistor) on Tuesday, December 16, 1947. Although Shockley had played a large part in the project, he was furious and agitated at being left out. Shortly afterward, during a stay in a hotel at a physics conference, he single-handedly figured out the theory of the junction transistor—a much better device than the point-contact transistor.
While Bardeen quit Bell Labs to become an academic (he went on to enjoy even more success studying superconductors at the University of Illinois), Brattain stayed for a while before retiring to become a teacher. Shockley set up his own transistor-making company and helped to inspire the modern-day phenomenon that is "Silicon Valley" (the prosperous area around Palo Alto, California where electronics corporations have congregated). Two of his employees, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, went on to found Intel, the world's biggest micro-chip manufacturer.
       

Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley were briefly reunited a few years later when they shared the world's top science award, the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics, for their discovery. Their story is a riveting tale of intellectual brilliance battling with petty jealousy and it's well worth reading more about. You can find some great accounts of it among the books and websites listed below.

Artwork: The original design of the point-contact transistor, as set out in John Bardeen and Walter Brattain's US patent (2,524,035), filed in June 1948 (about six months after the original discovery) and awarded October 3, 1950. This is a simple PN transistor with a thin upper layer of P-type germanium (yellow) on a lower layer of N-type germanium (orange). The three contacts are emitter (E, red), collector (C, blue), and base (G, green). You can read more in the original patent document, which is listed in the references below. Artwork courtesy of US Patent and Trademark Office.