Transistors & Semiconductors

History of the transistor and semiconductors. Transistors are semiconductor devices that can control the electrical current that flows between two terminals by a voltage applied to a third terminal. Their functions are similar to those of electrical relays and vacuum tubes. John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley received the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1948. Their advantages as small, low-power, low-cost, more reliable replacements for these devices were quickly recognized, and within a decade transistors had displaced them in a large majority of applications. The links included herein relate to transistors and semiconductors.