Though the modern transistor performs many functions, it is its ability to amplify an electrical signal and to act as a switch for which it is celebrated.
Before the invention of the transistor in 1947, the flow of current in an electronic device could be controlled through the use of a vacuum tube. Vacuum tubes - commonly known as valves - were relatively large and inefficient. But the development of the transistor meant electronic devices would become drastically smaller and cheaper.
The first consumer item to utilise the transistor was the hearing aid; mass-market "transistor radios" were not promoted until 1954. Early transistors were just a few centimetres high, but today millions of silicon-based transistors can be fitted onto a computer chip. It is the on and off states of these miniature switches that make binary, the "language" of the computer.
John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley are credited with the invention of the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories in December 1947. The word itself is an abbreviation of the words "transconductance" or "transfer" and "varistor".
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