Letting a Little Current Control a Lot for Six Decades - 60th Anniversary of the Transistor

 This weekend marked the 60th Anniversary of William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain success in building the first practical point-contact transistor at Bell Labs.

The transistor allows a small amount of current to control a large amount of current.  You can read a nice write up at Wikipedia and at in a nice write up on “How do Transistors Really Work?” by William Beaty.

Whether as discretely packaged individual transistors or as part of the transistor arrays in integrated circuits, Amateur Radio owes the majority of its modern equipment to transistor design.

Happy 60th Birthday to the Transistor!

73

Steve
K9ZW

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