4 ms·
Shockley was apparently awful to work for and reportedly tried to steal the credit for Bardeen and Brattain's transistor work. All in all he doesn't seem to hav
by zik 8y ago
Shockley was apparently awful to work for and reportedly tried to steal the credit for Bardeen and Brattain's transistor work. All in all he doesn't seem to have been a very nice person.
"He (Shockley) called both Bardeen and I in separately, shortly after the demonstration, and told us that sometimes the people who do the work don’t get the credit for it."
"Shockley took the lion’s share of the credit in public for the invention of transistor, which led to a deterioration of Bardeen’s relationship with Shockley. Bell Labs management however consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Shockley eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, and he essentially blocked the two from working on the junction transistor."
https://alixus.wordpress.com/undeserved-nobel-prizes-transistor-2/ https://alixus.wordpress.com/undeserved-nobel-prizes-transis...
Of course the FET transistor was actually invented by Lilienfeld twenty years earlier and was long since patented. Shockley and team were aware of it and referenced it in their own work. They were working around Lilienfeld's patent by doing things slightly differently with the BJT. So awarding Shockley's team the Nobel Prize for the invention of the transistor seems to overlook poor old Lilienfeld rather badly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Edgar_Lilienfeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Edgar_Lilienfeld
And in the end the transistors in your CPU are FETs derived from Lilienfeld's design, not the BJT of Shockley's team.
- slededit 8y agoFETs weren't desirable at the time though - which is why they didn't attain widespread use. Its very difficult to get linear behavior from a FET and at that time the primary use of the devices was analogue in linear mode. The BJT was more than just a patent workaround. These days we can make linear FETs although they are still rare. Most are intended to be used in saturation as part of digital circuitry.
- taneq 8y agoIronic that BJTs were developed to work around FETs' undesirable nonlinearities for analogue systems, while now FETs are used to work around BJTs' undesirable inefficiency in switchmode use. Just goes to show that in engineering, "how good is X?" is a meaningless question without saying what X is used for.
- archgoon 8y agoActually building a working device seems like a reasonable definition of inventing a transistor. Here's Lillienfields patent: http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/assets/media/classic-papers-pdfs/Lilienfeld_US1745175A_patent.pdf http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/assets/media/cl...
- zik 8y agoThere's some disagreement over it, but it does seem likely that Lilienfeld built a working radio with his FETs. We know he drew a schematic of one and it's specific enough that it seems likely it was the result of practical experimentation. Here's one quote: In 1981 the semiconductor physicist H. E. Stockman said "Lilienfeld demonstrated his remarkable tubeless radio receiver on many occasions, but God help a fellow who at that time threatened the reign of the tube."
- acangiano 8y agoI like that at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View they tell you his story and don't sugar coat it. They paint him as a genius who was petty and an insufferable person to deal with.
- pvg 8y agoI think it's more of a case that he was such an outlier in horribleness that even a museum with a focus on technology over personalities can't help but talk about it. That and the departure of the 'traitorous eight' is a key Silicon Valley formative event.
- snaky 8y agoI'm afraid the "Silicon Valley formative event" is the reason, so I'm afraid he wasn't such an outlier in horribleness - he just happened to be on the "wrong side of history".
- pvg 8y agoI think both of these things can be true - in an industry full of clever, eccentric and prickly people this dude has a 'traitorous eight' associated with him. Just by name alone, it's very strong play.