Present Status of Transistor Development

When the transistor was announced not quite four years ago, it was felt that a new departure in communication techniques had come into view. Here was a mechanically simple device which could perform many of the amplification functions over which the electron tube had long held a near monopoly. The device was small, required no heater power, and was potentially very rugged; moreover, it consisted of materials which might be expected to last indefinitely long, and it did not appear to be too complicated to make. However, as might be expected for a newly invented electron device, the practical realization of these promises still required the overcoming 411 412 THE HELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL, MAY 1952 of a number of obstacles. While the operation of the first devices was well understood in a general way, several items were limiting and puzzling, for example: a--Units intended to be alike varied considerably from each other-- the reproducibility was bad. b--In an uncomfortably large fraction of the exploratory devices, the properties changed suddenly and inexplicably with time and temperature, whereas other units exhibited extremely stable characteristics with regard to time--the reliability was poor. c--'It was difficult to use the theory and then existing undeveloped technology to develop and design devices to a varied range of electrical characteristics needed for different circuit functions. Performance characteristics were limited with respect to gain, noise figure, frequency range and power--the designability was poor.