File:Bell telephone magazine (1922) (14732050406).jpg

Identifier: belltelephonemag00vol2930amerrich (find matches)
Title: Bell telephone magazine
Year: 1950
Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept
Subjects: Telephone
Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.)
Contributing Library: Prelinger Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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cs, and even theory of quality con-trol. Added to this essential theoret-ical background were the productsof research in metals, ceramics, sold-ering compounds. glass-to-metalbonds, and the chemistry of gettingthe surfaces of these materials atomi-cally clean. New inventions had tobe forthcoming to make it possible tobuild the tube. A new method of making coated cathodes had to bedevised, a special machine had to beinvented to wind the grid with therequired uniformity, a new ceramicseal had to be invented, as did also anentirely new method of assembly.These steps were not the obviousones to take, but came from originalideas, from invention, and from thecapacity for taking infinite pains. A New Dei-Ice: the Transistor My third and last topic is the tran-sistor. It is a device for amplifyingelectric currents, and so is a competi-tor of the amplifying vacuum tube.but. unlike it. has no vacuum, nor doesit have a hot cathode. In structure it 1950 Some Observations on Industrial Research 21
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Two of the transistors which are currently under development at the Bell Laboratories as amplifying devices is a very simple thing, consistingonly of a tiny germanium crystal witha couple of metallic points close to-gether pressing on it. Currentthrough one point to the crystal influ-ences current through the other pointfrom the crystal. The transistor is such a simple de-vice that one may well wonder win-it was not discovered by cut-and-tryexperiments. Many experimentershad had the idea that a solid-stateamplifier should be a practical possi-bility, but all of their attempts tomake one had failed. It was not forlack of trying that such an amplifierwas not invented earlier, but tor lackof understanding. The transistor is as much a prod- uct of invention as was the vacuumtube amplifier; but in the absence ofknowledge of just what goes on atthe contact of a metal point with thesurface of a semi-conductor, no onehad the basis tor conceiving how tomake an amplifier from a germaniumcrystal

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