Physicist — Walter Houser Brattain (Amoy, China 1902 – Washington 1987) was an American physicist, born in China to American parents. He spent most of his career at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he specialised in the physics of semiconductor surfaces. In December 1947, together with John Bardeen and under the guidance of William Shockley, he built the first point-contact transistor, a device capable of amplifying and switching electrical signals. This invention, which replaced bulky thermionic valves, opened the way to all modern electronics, from computers to telephones. For this achievement the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.
Trivia
The first working transistor, built from a chip of germanium, a small piece of plastic and a thin gold foil, went into operation just days before Christmas 1947 and is often regarded as the invention that ushered in the information age.
Theories and contributions
- Point-contact transistor — First semiconductor device capable of amplifying electrical signals, the basis of modern electronics.
Appears in chapters
Linked atoms
1 linked atoms.