Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley had submitted the patent application for a "three-electrode circuit element ...

The telephone company had problems with vacuum tubes, too, and hoped to find something else to use for switching telephone calls. The idea of somehow using semiconductors (solid materials such as ...

On Dec. 16, 1947, the future began with the invention of the transistor. A lab notebook indicates that researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories first got the thing to work on this day 75 years ago.

The future began 75 years ago this week with the invention of something small that’s considered the most manufactured item in human history. Odds are, you are surrounded by them right now. The ...

75 years ago this month, research scientists working at Bell Labs first created, then unveiled to the world a new device—the point contact transistor. Some call it the greatest invention of the 20th ...