The Transistor

Bill Shockley’s team at Bell Labs can’t have begun to imagine the implications that their 1948 patent would have for mankind. The giant leap from vacuum tube valves

has enabled so many innovations which shape our modern world and which we just take for granted without thinking.

The transistor radio really ushered in the modern information age. The transistor enabled space flight, humans to reach another celestial body and millions of earth bound viewers and listeners to share in that dream and triumph, the like of which we have not seen before or since. It was a short step to integrated circuits and miniaturisation bringing the explosion of personal computing, telecommunications and the internet.

Submitted by: John Sullivan