Word: transistor
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Dates: during 1948-1948
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Last week Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated a small, simple device that can do many of the jobs now done by vacuum tubes. Called a "Transistor," it has no vacuum, no glass envelope. It requires no heating current and can start working immediately without a warmup...
...Transistor is a slim metal cylinder about an inch long. Inside are two hair-thin wires whose points press, two-thousandths of an inch apart, on a pinhead of germanium. A feeble current in the "input" wire controls a much larger current flowing from the "output" wire. Such "amplification" is the essential property of vacuum tubes. The Transistor works on a different principle (by changing the conductivity of the germanium), but it amplifies the input current as much as 100 times...
...Transistors are not in production yet, but Bell scientists, to show what their little brain cells can do, demonstrated a radio receiver with vacuum tubes replaced by Transistors. Though not very powerful, it worked fine. Probably the Transistor's first practical assignment will be to amplify currents in telephone circuits, a job now done by vacuum tubes...