AT&T Archives: Genesis of the Transistor

To see more from from the AT&T Archives, visit techchannel.att.com/archives
In the late 1940s, Bell Laboratories scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invented the transistor, the first solid-state amplifier or switch, and in doing so laid the foundation for all modern electronics and circuitry. The three shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 for the achievement. It may be the most important invention of the 20th century.
This 1965 film shows footage of them reunited/recreating their 1940s lab time to show how it was done, but in real life they had parted. Bardeen had left the labs in 1951 for the U. of IL; Shockley in 1956 to run a semiconductor company in California (laying the groundwork for Silicon Valley), and Brattain retired in 1967 to Whitman College.
Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ
To learn more about the invention of the transistor, watch the original Tech Channel series From the Labs: The Transistor - techchannel.att.com/play-video...

[@figurehe4d]

My parents met while working at at&t. they both died from cancer within 3 years of each other. another three years after the last one passed I discovered an interest in electronics and the underlying concepts behind integrated circuits and computer chips. Today's the anniversary of my mom's passing. I'd give anything to be able to talk to them about this stuff.

[@0ne87]

Very sorry to hear about your parents. But if you're still interested in electronics check out the book called "the idea factory". Its about bell labs itay be very relevant considering your parents worked for at&t.

[@vance2964]

Sounds suspicious. Did they die of exposure to radio and microwaves? What were they working there?

[@SomeDudeInBaltimore]

@@vance2964 Radio and microwaves do not cause cancer, they are non-ionizing. The frequency is too low, hence the energy to dislodge electrons from their shells is still well below visible light. They can cause heating of tissue at high power levels though. That's about it.

[@864productions6]

@@SomeDudeInBaltimore I Used to be a sat tech for direct t.v. trust me RF. waves do cause cancer

[@PygmalionFaciebat]

@@864productions6 We understand the connection between electromagnetic waves and cancer very well. The longer the wavelength the less the danger. High frequency (gamma rays) indeed causes cancer. Radio waves at best are around the wavelength of 10 centimeters (5G). At best we feel it warm (microwave-wavelength). Much shorter wavelengths UV-rays have ... thats why we can have skin-cancer from it , if we have sunburns to often. There is no reason why long wavelenghts should cause cancer.. they literally cant transport their energy to the cells... hell, as a sat-tech you should know it better than me (because you are able to calculate it): how big an antenna needs to be, to resonate with a specific radio-frequency. Thats for a reason!

[@user-ve8xq1cf5o]

One of the revolutionary thing that humans accomplished. It impacted the whole society.

[@ahndeux]

I still have a mint box of 1951-1953 point contact transistor model 1698. This is even before when 2Nxxxx numbers were issued to parts. Its serialized in a box and has never been used. I found it in Goodwill back in the early 1980s. I had no idea what it was but thought it was interesting. There were piles and boxes of that stuff everywhere heading to the trash bins of history. I am glad I saved that box.

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

You should put the word out to see if anyone is willing to take/buy any of those transistors for display and/other. I'm sure many a museum, computer, electronic, or other, would be interested--all over the world. It would be a shame for them to get trashed when you throw off the mortal coil.

[@DanaTheInsane]

And I leave the house every day carrying quite a few billion of them.

[@MicheleFranchini]

As an electronic engineer, I'm emotional when I see these great scientists; I have studied their theories all of my academic life. Great footage!

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

The transistor was the invention. The integrated circuit was the innovation that got things rolling to where we are now.

[@uplaywithfire7564]

The germanium transistors in my treble booster guitar pedal gives the best dirty sound ever! A great invention no doubt!

[@TiberiusStorm]

You wouldn't be able to type that comment on a cellphone or computer without billions of transistors so definitely an amazing invention!

[@tomservo5007]

AT&T you gave us Unix and the transistor .... just wow

[@johnopalko5223]

And so many others: photocells, CCDs, information theory, negative feedback, the discovery of the 3-degree background radiation, the laser, sound motion pictures, Karnaugh maps, the electret microphone, the Nyquist theorem, Hamming codes, stereo recording... And that just scratches the surface.

[@thedon8594]

And a phone bill.

[@saisrikargollamudi7892]

@@johnopalko5223 thank you sir.

[@jamesslick4790]

@@thedon8594 Yeah, true. But unlike with T-Mobile, With AT&T I also get a decent signal. 😜

[@flyingdutchmanwa]

Imagine they were still around today and be able to witness the impact their discoveries have had (and continue to have) on the entire planet…

[@mistergrandpasbakery9941]

I'd love to meet and shake hands with the folks that are preserving this wonderful and fascinating history! Great job!!

[@joshgiesbrecht]

It's amazing how at first, no one even knew what they were doing. I mean they understood the basics, but some of the best discoveries were complete educated guesses. I tend to imagine they just "knew" what to do and how to do it, when they weren't really sure themselves. Very cool

[@sophiacristina]

I think its like programming, in your head you know what to do and the logic, but when you are coding, some shit happens here, some shit happens there, by trial and error you fix the unexpected...

[@guntiskolcs3689]

Its not true- I believe their work was based on knowlegde gained both from german and (in that time) soviet scientists. P-N semiconductor theory basics already was mentioned in soviet scientists Ioffe and Lashkaryev scientific works in 1941. Many interesting things (like research on silicon alloys) were also done by another scientist- Losev, who unfortunately died from starvation in Leningrad blockade. At that time Germans already had working transistor prototype- based on gallium bromide crystals, in 1938 (by Paul and Hilsch). War stopped everything.

[@Xezlec]

Scientists don't "just know" things. It's all research, reasoning, experimentation, observation, and sometimes a little luck.

[@diobrando2160]

They knew what they were doing

[@ryanrobinson9691]

nope that's why it takes years -an MIT Physicist

[@MuhammadSulemanshafique]

Great! I wish I had this video when I was in college. Salute to the makers of this video. The concept that I hadn't been able to understand in my enitre 33 years has been understood within 15 minutes just now. And just imagine we aren't taught with such a clear videos even today. USA is USA

[@omsingharjit]

This is purely pure knowledge about transistor what i always wants to learn. Thanks a lot. :)

[@cardogkitchen4106]

Most important invention since the wheel...

[@uber1337hakz]

Induction motor and lightbulb are greater inventions.

[@larrygall5831]

@@uber1337hakz Well, they're all truly great inventions, but the advent of transistors led to computers for the masses, and the internet.. which was responsible for the mass exchange of knowledge, ideas, invention and communication in ways that were impossible with telephones and mainframes that took up a room and did less than a phone today. It led to so many other inventions they are literally too many to count.. many of them having nothing to do with transistors. I forgot to mention the millions of lives saved using medical machinery and research using computers.

[@profd65]

No fucking way.

[@kingjakewolf5348]

@@bilbobaggins4710 stfu you are probably a frustrated boomer that doesn't even know how the internet works

[@sophiacristina]

@@bilbobaggins4710 Yes, its amazing, you can do all that and at same time does beautiful things, its a double-sided, advantage and disadvantage, at same time we can see shit online, but think about otherwise, now medics from far away can exchange knowledge, and the improvement of this knowledge is way faster than before, the maths, people had books with billion of pages with tables of formulas solutions, now we can just use a math website or wikipedia, also, AI, AI is making improvements beyond what we expected, in fact, i believe AI is the new "wheel", but AI happens because computer, AI can diagnose in certain areas better than medics, now, i think ISIS would still make their shit with or without internet, internet makes them visible, and child porn, well, people from all eras abused kids, and also internet is a good way to arrest them, and i think those two disadvantage is little near the advantages internet brought...

[@Debjit625]

Thanks to AT&T to provide us something like this and also KZbin to host it...

[@DK640OBrianYT]

Though I've already watched this (and all other AT&T Archive videos) multiple times, these technological advances still impresses me to the point of leaving me shaking my head in awe ever so softly. Without English ingenuity in the 19th Century and American ingenuity in the 20th., we'd be left with nothing.

[@phuturephunk]

Thank you for posting this up. It was fantastic.

[@discedoce1827]

Bardeen, Brattan, and Schockley, 3 men; hence the transistor, a 3 terminal device.

[@toddshockley]

Shockley

[@keefebaby]

And to think this eventually led to the invention of the time machine in the year 2126, amazing

[@coindeposit8134]

does Bell System come back in 2126?

[@AlainHubert]

What amazes me more is that in 2011 there was no way to correct the out-of-sync audio track with the video, despite all the modern technology available.

[@mattpeacock5208]

I'd love to go back in time, and be like "you have no effing idea what you're starting".

[@ARBB1]

Such clear presentation.

[@iamwaseemnoori]

one of the greatest achievement of mankind.

[@davidca96]

A lot of people dont realize just how huge AT&T used to be, they were so dominant the government forced them to split the company several times.

[@realidadoficcion]

yet today they call you a communist if you try to do the same

[@thomasslone1964]

i only have like 3 billion transistors in my hand right now as i watch this

[@tomservo5007]

if only you had a nickle for every one of them

[@michaelrosenstock9187]

460,000,000,000 in total of the entire motherboard

[@susananderson5029]

a blast from the past ... thanks for the memories.

[@LorgioPieper]

Wonderful.

[@jaitanmartini1478]

Thank you!

[@halonothing1]

12:20 Says a single wafer contains as many as 2,000 transistors. As of 2021 a 12in wafer could have as many as 3 trillion transistors. Although wafers were also a lot smaller back then, on top of the fact that transistors were larger. So it was kind of a double bonus when we figured out how to grow bigger crystals of silicon.

[@guitarsncarsnart]

Very good. I think I'm a fan of this archive...

[@JayDeeChannel]

Remarkable.

[@FantaClown]

FantastiKo ! Ma che Meravigliaa !

[@ZIPZAPRAHUL]

excellent video ........

[@seyedmarashi]

A+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ welldone! thanks

[@omsingharjit]

While playing this video my device (phone ) said " this is how we are born "

[@cblazer]

Six-Core Core i7 (Sandy Bridge-E) 2,270,000,000 fpga, virtex-7 6,800,000,000

[@bogdog999]

And you can give thanks for all 6,800,000,000 of them in one tiny package to Shockley.

[@mirroredvoid8394]

3990X: 39.5 Billion at 2.9ghz

[@kathanjeable]

Holy mother of Christ!

[@jrbeddingfield]

Totally American Innovation, fostered by our incredible culture and society. Changed the world immeasurably and eternally. Unimaginably sad that the AT&T of today is beholden to foreign adversaries.

[@jonassteinberg3779]

Yes! Yes! Yes!

[@nzoomed]

WOW thats pretty amazing, that looks like they were using silicon wafers even back then to make the transistors from! Ive always wanted to see how they were made. Not sure how modern transistors are made today.

[@MrCarburettor]

I thought I was understanding things till Bratton showed up.. Kelvin or Calvin what is he referring to?

[@aaroncurtis8545]

At 00:45 I can't tell if that's a death star prototype, or just the remote Luke trains with on the Falcon.

[@miles2378]

Thats "Telstar" the first comunications satalite.

[@leyasep5919]

And then Bell Labs was sold... Anyway, Mataré and his team did also groundbreaking studies on the other side of the ocean, remember that ? 🙂

[@johnpenguin9188]

Just to think all this technology springing from a few guys playing with electricity.

[@coindeposit8134]

hehe telephone company making tech revolution go transistor invention

[@johnmorgan4368]

Bratton's diction reminds me of Torgo...

[@FrancisE.Dec.Esquire]

I was in Radio/ TV Repair and Electronic Engineering in 1973 -75 The Tunnel Diode and other things was popping up exciting times, I was born 1949, was always a Crystal Set lover (when I was 5 Years Old) at 8 I was building kits from Popular Electronics Magazine, was mentioned by Edetor in Chirf (forgot his name.) I was youngest PopTron Write in with a spot on question. I am glad to be still alive about 6 Miles from Sinican Valley

[@isaelalejandroherreraherna9827]

when he said "tiny" I just could smile because nowadays transistors are made of few atoms!!!!!

[@RoboGenesHimanshuVerma]

Wow 😮

[@joachimkeinert3202]

See kzbin.info/www/bejne/goOti6erpqiig9k for a better resolution of this video (plus introduction)

[@ingussilins6330]

Good idea, how to made transistor from galena crystal or iron pyrite. Use transformer winding wire as a isolated cat's whisker and water drop.

[@transkryption]

Cool

[@MasterYoshidino]

I wonder if Fallout should have a spinoff that features the "what if" transistors existed.

[@greensombrero3641]

Read the book True Genius regarding John Bardeen. Outstanding.

[@jasonbourne3639]

Hull polarization technology, just in time for the space trek.

[@konohaneoas6070]

Brasil I have a rádio desses

[@100roberthenry]

brilliant....

[@michaelrosenstock9187]

In a galaxy s8 there are 460,000,000,000 transistors total and 3,000,000,000 transistors in the cpu alone

[@MuhammadSulemanshafique]

I am confused..who to give credit to...the inventors of Transistor or AT&T who made this possible for me to understand.

[@googleuser7454]

Both

[@googleuser7454]

It's all so fascinating

[@coindeposit8134]

Mighty Minority **sends over a billion thank you notes to AT&T, each for every transistor used to create my phone**

[@markusallport1276]

They fail to mention the people who worked to make these transistors become a reality. Not the inventors, they were the brains and the reason we have them. I'm talking about the people who actually did the work to make the designers and supervisors worthy of the praise they received. Credit is never given the the folks who do the dirty work, or the risk taking to test these components, as long as it works within the time frame they are given, then it's all good and the hotshot designers get all the accolades.

[@spockspock]

The 1947 transistor is the coffee table model.

[@timcent7199]

With an anaemic smile I sit motionless pretending I understood everything as if it came naturally to me. In reality I'm pretty certain I didn't understand a damned thing. Still, the video was fascinating.

[@scienceteam9254]

3:30 FOOOOOOOLL BRIIIIIIIDGEE --- wait a sec, do those thing exist back then?

[@chanakyasinha8046]

Rectum on faaaayar

[@soal159]

Okay I am going to need you to fit as many as you can on a chip and double the amount next year and just keep making them smaller every year as well.

[@BangMaster96]

If you think about it, we have all these technologies thanks to world war 1 and world war 2, if it wasn't for the wars, Germany, USA, and Britain wouldn't have heavily invested in defense equipment research, which led to so many new discoveries and inventions, from the small transistor to the atomic bomb, from planes to rockets and satellites, it's amazing, so many people died in these two wars, but their deaths led to the creation of our modern world.

[@coolworx]

Bardeen and Brattain were the real brains behind the transistor. Shockley was just a manager - and a poor one at that, given his infamous (mis)management style at "Shockley Semiconductor" which led to the traitorous eight (who were fed up with him) and went out on their own to fabulous success.

[@Xezlec]

The color is totally gone. Can videos like this be restored?

[@phonotical]

Some weird reverb in this

[@richardhead8264]

that opening music tho!

[@joejee01]

And then Moore's law ^v^

[@cienciaeculturaseverdovoug2424]

HOW OR WHAT IS TIPE OR KINDE THE COLA MATERIAL OF THE UNION BETWIN THE GERMANIO AND PLACOF THE AÇO POLE NEGATIVE FOR TRANSISTOR 50 WATT POWER

[@tltoan0s300]

UFO 3:50

[@dennislei58]

What!!!!!??? Transistor have gold!

[@yousorooo]

Yes.

[@titaniumdiveknife]

*Mr Krabs impersonation intensifies*

[@ManyHeavens42]

and we used it to trap humanity, it was supposed to save humanity

[@hex1915]

mathematics is the greatest invention

[@fckgooglegooglefck9124]

announced 6 mos after roswell crash. gee

[@ebw]

جاي من حلقة الدحيح

[@drty4721]

و انا

[@razvanatlantis5383]

S-au gasit placi electronice si fabrici pina venirea noastra pe pamint. Inaintea noastra a fost un imperiu resetat. De la ei avem tehnologiile... Iar cwle noi aduse departe de continentul nostru

[@fuckugplus]

Ailllll and im holding a couple billion of them rn

[@randomvideos3187]

Today billions of transistors can now fit to a single chip..

[@FerintoshFarmsPhotography]

50,000,000,000 on a chip now adays in 2018

[@paco_rider]

Welll.... watching this in 2019 has no sense

[@cienciaeculturaseverdovoug2424]

ESQUEMAS OF CIRCUITOS SLOW SCAN TELEVISION FOR LINK TO TELEVISION IF WAS BEEN POSSIVEL..

[@heedfulnewt6625]

Hilarious 🕴🏻

[@Fanears]

2:55 "WAS exploited" So does that mean we went backwards? If so what happened there?

[@cebeciler4403]

Vay anasina be güzel bi çalışma. Bilgi ogrenmek hercseyin ilkini gormek cok guzel di.

[@admiralamezcua]

lol

[@ih8tusernam3s]

MOSFETS!

[@dennisp3314]

You watch this kind of stuff & you just have to wonder - WHAT happened to this sad sad country ?

[@abadykazuya891]

الدحيح

[@ilillillliiilillili]

One more like, and we will have 666.

[@rogerdodger8415]

ATT held a monopoly on phones, and the phone system that stifled innovation for fifty years. If they still ruled, we'd be using black phones, hooked to landlines, calling the operator for information.

[@rogerdodger8415]

@Kevin Counihan No, you have it completely backwards. When AT&T enjoyed their monopoly, they had one phone to choose from. A black one. You paid an exorbitant amount of money for a long distant call, and the non-digital quality was poor at best. You had to buy a seperate box to record your calls, when not home, and for years there was no features that we take for granted now, like call forwarding, conference calls, call identifiers, and speed dial. It was only through the opening of competition that, the world of smart phones opened up, and gave us our features that we have now. If AT&T had their way, we'd still be using landlines. Here.. Educate yourself.... www.technologizer.com/2011/03/20/att-buys-t-mobile/

[@rogerdodger8415]

@Kevin Counihan I start to read your comment and in five seconds. I read "the original phone company had all those features you mentioned" that shows me right there, that you don't have a clue about what you are saying. It was only the DIGITAL revolution that brought all the features that we now have. I mean.. Are you a NUT? Do you think that AT&T brought you your current cellphone? "would have happened anyway" barahahaha. They went from Alexander Graham Bell all the way to the sixties with the same basic rotary phone, and you insist it would happen anyway?? When there's NO COMPETITION, there is no advance in equipment or service. That's why the smart phone didn't come from Russia or Cuba!! And guess what? It was SONY that brought the first transistor radio. ATT didn't know what to do with it!!

[@rogerdodger8415]

@Kevin Counihan Just Hillarious! Digital was MORSE CODE?? I guess we should go back a few thousand more years to credit the ancient Greeks!! SONY commercialized and sold MILLIONS of transistor radios! I guess you don't know about SPRINT and it's all digital network?? The telephone company did NOTHING but hinder any advances in telephony! It's not the "first use" of anything that brings the price down, and the discovery to the masses! It's the commercialization and the MASS PRODUCTION that brings costs down! ATT never had ANY desire to bring ANY costs down since they were a monopoly! A fact which you cannot deny. Motorola created the first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTac, in 1983. However, this device used ANALOG communication.... Now read the link that I sent you. Educate yourself. Here are the facts.. One year after the release of the TR-1 sales approached the 100,000 mark. The look and size of the TR-1 was well received, but the reviews of the TR-1's performance were typically adverse.[12] AND ON THE OTHER HAND.... With the visible success of the TR-63 Japanese competitors such as Toshiba and Sharp joined the market. By 1959, in the United States market, there were more than six million transistor radio sets produced by Japanese companies that represented $62 million in revenue. Now for the last time. READ THE FACTS.... www.aei.org/publication/lessons-att-break-30-years-later/

[@rogerdodger8415]

@Kevin Counihan A monopoly and its hindrance of progress is not about "its inventions". No one denies that att holds patents. It's the EXPLOSION of devices and services that came about AFTER they were broken up. Now, my ORIGINAL comment about them stifling innovation for fifty years still stands. History bears out the fact that all these dramatic improvements came about AFTER and BECAUSE of their dissolution. As long as they were getting wealthy charging exorbitant rates for long distant calls, there was NO REASON for them to change anything.

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

Yup. In my household of the 70s, the phone company was the MOST hated company, by a longshot. Two examples, from the multitude of examples, are that they required a household to pay them per PHONE JACK (not just line), and one had to pay them not to list your name and number in their phone book. The phone company would often go around using equipment to determine if a household had installed another phone jack and had an "unauthorized" phone attached to it. There was a black market for bootleg phones. That way one would not have to pay the phone company for an overpriced phone, an overpriced "install," and a phone jack "fee."

[@bloodsweatandtearsforeverl9833]

Let me guess Jermaine found the element jermanium

[@RafaelLopezNewton]

Are you sure about that?

[@dankestgamez4128]

a kaće mrtvi labos iz OEL-a?

[@bibluteque]

We should all be thankful of the aliens who gave us this and other technologies when they crashed their UFOs in Roswell, New Mexico.

[@stevehead365]

Bullshit

[@bibluteque]

@@stevehead365 Thanks for introducing yourself.

[@jgaines3200]

Some people on league still use these fuckin things god damn 5 minute wait for people to load the game on wooden pcs

[@LUISTARWIND]

but who cares anyway right ???

[@lance8080]

LUISTARWIND its time for another pipe hit right.

[@mrjodoe]

how Skynet began...

[@johneygd]

The transister changed or lives,giving us more knowledge and control of the human been,to conrol eachother,it's also responsible for local mind control.

[@oscarkorlowsky4938]

They call those things transistors? Now we have real transistors, with technically a tiny world inside of it and real brains in those much tiny things that those 1950's nock offs

[@coindeposit8134]

hmm yes today i will call old versions of things fake

[@edanrobert5338]

His voice is too dreadful