Back then the most advanced electronic computing machine called ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania. It contained 17,468 electronic lamps and weighed 30 tons. Obviously, this cumbersome machine could not keep pace with the progress. The situation was improved in 1947 by the employees of the Bell Lab of AT&T. These were William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.
On the day in question, they invited their bosses and showed them their newly invented transistor that was a point-contact transistor for... Why bother about these complex details? Shockley described the essence of the device very clearly: “If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.”
The invention of the transistor truly revolutionized the electrical technology, which was acknowledged by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awarded the inventors the Nobel Prize in physics.
