Landmarks: Birth of Modern Electronics

In June 1948, the Physical Review published a description of a novel electronic device that “may be employed as an amplifier, oscillator, and for other purposes for which vacuum tubes are ordinarily used.” That statement hardly begins to capture the importance of the transistor, which made possible technology unimaginable at the time. But the first transistor design never saw commercial success. A different design, unveiled two years later by a colleague and rival of the original authors, spawned the modern microelectronics revolution.