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That's not accurate. AT&T dominated telecommunications for decades before the transistor. Many of Bell Labs great scientific inventions predate the transistor,
by tlb 8y ago
That's not accurate. AT&T dominated telecommunications for decades before the transistor. Many of Bell Labs great scientific inventions predate the transistor, such as information theory.
- mywittyname 8y agoSure, but the transistor ushered in the long-distance era and helped AT&T establish their monopoly (and their eventual breakup). Regional telephone services were already beginning to drive down costs in local markets.
- tlb 8y agoMaybe you're thinking of the triode, which AT&T did have a monopoly on around 1915, when they deployed the first transcontinental long-distance service using vacuum tubes to boost the signal. They bought deForest's patents and filed many more of their own on amplification circuits. They had direct-dial long-distance by 1951, using relays and tubes. The transistor started making a difference in telephony with the release of the 1ESS switch in 1965. But transistors were a commodity by then.