It Was 76 Years Ago Today, That Bell Labs Showed The World How To Play
In December 1947, a device was created that changed the world like no device has ever done in the history of our planet: the transistor. It was created by N.J., John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill. In fact, they were the perfect research team, with Bardeen being brilliant at theory and Brattain at experimentation. Both of them were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1956 for their work (with William Shockley), and where Bardeen is the only person to ever gain a second Nobel Prize in 1972.
While I studied electrical engineering in the 1970s, I was first exposed to the magic of the NPN and the PNP junction, and I still marvel at its operations. The transistor itself is made up of just three connections: Collector, Base and Emitter.
The thing that you had to remember (for an NPN transistor) is that a small current from the Base to the Emitter causes a much larger current to flow from the Collector to the Emitter. This leads to a current gain, and where microamps can become milliamps. But, where they become most interesting is when they operated a switch and where current flowed from the Collector to the…
