Transistor: Smaller Is Better
1948 AD
1948 1948
75.00W40.00N
SCI

MURRAY HILL, NEW JERSEY
	Once computers were as big as buildings.  Once there was no such thing as a portable radio or television.  Before the days of the transistor, all these electronic devices depended upon a bulky, undependable and energy-hungry device called a vacuum tube.
	The transistor, like the vacuum tube, is a way of electronically controlling the flow of electricity in a circuit.  Transistors are made of silicon, a substance that can be made more or less conductive by passing a weak current through it.  American scientists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley invented the devices in 1948.
	But the transistor was only the beginning.  In the 1960s, scientists began putting entire "integrated circuits" on a single chip of silicon.  This led directly to the development of pocket calculators and later to the desktop and laptop computers of today.