This picture is about the transistor.
There are three transistors here in this collection of small electronic parts:
the original point contact type,
the junction type, and the photo transistor.
And here's a more complex type of transistor. This is called
the junction tetrode.
These tiny transistors are destined to play a big part in our electronic age.
They will make possible smaller more compact electronic devices,
and will need less maintenance and have a longer life.
But to grasp fully the importance of these new members of the electronic family,
let's recall the wonders made possible by the high vacuum tube.
The common radio tube. The roots of the electronic age
reach back into the early years of our century.
In 1907 Dr. Lee de Forest discovered that a grid of fine wire
placed between a filament and a metal plate in a vacuum tube
could control the flow of electrons between the filament and plate
and the tube could be made to amplify as well as detect the electrical wave.
He called this amplifying tube an Audion.
Weak signals applied to the import or grid of the Audion
caused similar and much stronger signals to flow from the plate or output.
A few years later two scientists, Dr. Arnold of Bell Telephone Laboratories
and Dr. Langmuir of General Electric.
working independently, found that by pumping out the Audion tube
to create a very high vacuum, they obtained greater fidelity and stability.
Here's one of the first high vacuum tubes that
started us on the way to the wonders of our electronic age.
By 1915 telephone research physicists and engineers had succeeded in developing
methods of manufacturing a vacuum tube
with sufficiently uniform characteristics so that hundreds of them were installed
as amplifiers
thus making possible the first telephone line between New York and San Francisco.
And 3,000 mile transcontinental telephone calls
became a reality.
The same year 1915 at Arlington, Virginia telephone engineers hooked together 500 vacum tubes
to generate enough radio power to send the human voice across the Atlantic
for the first time in history.
Words spoken into a radio telephone transmitter at Arlington
were heard by engineers listening at the Eiffel Tower in Paris
and also at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1920 brought the beginning of radio broadcasting when a vacuum tube radio
receiver was a real luxury.
Then the next 10 years gave us talking motion pictures,
trans-oceanic radio telephone servicev
television demonstrations, and ship to shore telephony.
With our electronic age in full swing the coaxial cable,
the cathode ray tube, the iconoscope and the image orthocon,
aided by hundreds of more conventional vacuum tubes,
gave us television, radar for war,
radar for peace.
And then microwave radio relay
to speed hundreds of telephone calls as well as television programs from
coast to coast. The heart of all these electronic systems has been the vacuum tube.
But the Bell Telephone Laboratories have added an entirely new and different
heart to modern communication systems.
The transistor. Operating on a new and different principle
arising from basic research on solid substances
and how the electrons inside them behave. How did it all come about?
Well, Doctors Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain,
and their associates at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, were working on
a problem in pure research,
investigating the surface properties of germanium, a substance known to be a
semiconductor of electricity.
Their studies suggested a way to amplify an electric current within a solid
without a vacuum or a heating element. And after months of calculations,
experiments, tests, the transistor was born. The transistor - a new name,
a new device that can do many of the jobs done by the vacuum tube,
and many the tube can't do.
Let's see how the transistor and tube measure up.
First off, the vacuum tube is power hungry.
While a tube like this generally demands a watt or more
of electricity a millionth of a watt is enough for the transistor.
Even a makeshift battery of moist blotting paper wrapped around a coin
can power transistor.
[Electronic signal tone]
The vacuum tube gets pretty hot.
Sometimes a little too hot. That's why in complex devices
the tubes must be spaced far enough apart for proper ventilation.
Since transistors remain cool
they can be crowded together in a small space.
In size, reliability and ruggedness too, the tiny transistor has many advantages.
And research goes on to make it still more useful.
Many new and improved types of transistors are probably early models,
but transistors are no longer just an experiment.
Here they are being produced at the Allentown, Pennsylvania plant
of Western Electric, the manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell System.
Different types for different purposes.
The Bell Telephone people have lots of jobs lined up for them
jobs based on the transistor's ability to amplify speech sounds in this way:
[Man demonstrating, voice low] "This is how my voice would sound over a 75 mile telephone line
that has no amplifying device. [Voice louder] Now
with a transistor amplifier in the line, my voice
is amplified so that you can hear me distinctly."
This, for example, will mean that in isolated farmhouses far from central exchanges
the transistor, right in the telephone, will make it easier for the farmer
to hear and be heard
on his rural telephone.
And transistors can replace many of the vacuum tubes used in providing
long distance telephone service.
Because they are so tiny
transistors have made it possible to miniaturize many types of electronic equipment
This equipment requires less space and will cost less to maintain.
Transistors may also be used in multi-channel telephony
which increases the number of calls that can be carried at the same time
along telephone lines.
When you dial direct from your town
to a distant city, transistors in this route selector
may be helping to mark out the pathway along which your call will go.
Transistors may some day go under the sea,
built right into underwater telephone cables. But transistors go well with lots of
other industries too.
Many manufacturers have been licensed to produce transistors
and devise new applications. Through their efforts you may be able to get music
with a flick of your wrist
from the so-called Dick Tracy radio.
And with a portable television set
you may be able to enjoy video entertainment anywhere you go.
For the military the transistor opens up fantastic possibilities,
most of them in too early a stage of development
to be talked about.
Transistors will take their place in the complex calculating machines
that have often been called electronic brains, because they enable man to save
days, month, even years in solving mathematical problems. Of course we cannot
build a calculating machine as flexible as the human brain, but even a man-made computer
designed to do hundreds of brain-like calculating jobs
might need an Empire State Building to house it and a Niagara Falls to power and cool it,
if vacuum tubes were used in its construction.
Substituting transistors for tubes,
such a versatile machine could fit into a good-sized room,
and power and cooling needs would be relatively low.
With the transistor man has drawn
far toward matching some of the capacity of the human brain. He has done it with
imagination,
with the inventiveness and teamwork of the Bell telephone scientists who are
looking forward to the age
just beyond the Age of Electronics.