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This article attributes the transistor to Shockley, but this is incorrect. It was really invented by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Shockley, their manager,

This article attributes the transistor to Shockley, but this is incorrect. It was really invented by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Shockley, their manager, tried to steal all the credit, and mostly succeeded. https://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/egos.html https://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/egos.html

cambalache 6y ago
> This article attributes the transistor to Shockley, but this is incorrect. The article does not claim such thing. John writes " After many further developments, in 1948 the physicist William Schockley patented transistors that use both holes and electrons to form a kind of switch. " Which it is correct as you can easily check here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 This not the case of a PHB robbing all the limelight from the engineers. Shockley was kinda of an asshole and had a big ego but he was a great scientist. And the junction transistor he individually designed and patented (see above) went on to be more successful than the point-contact transistor developed by Brattain and Bardeen. The Nobel prize was fairly awarded to the three of them.
- warbaker 6y ago
  John Bardeen is one of the greatest physicists of all time. He is the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in physics. Shockley may have been a talented scientist, but he did not invent the transistor, and tried to steal (not share in, but steal) the credit from the people who did. Newton was a jerk, but he invented modern physics. Shockley was also a jerk, but that doesn't mean he invented the transistor.
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    Why was Newton a jerk?
- aspaceman 6y ago
  > kinda an asshole “ My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment.” Shockley was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 1982 United States Senate election in California. He ran on a single-issue platform of highlighting the "dysgenic threat" Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. This angered Shockley, who thought his name should also be on the patents because the work was based on his field effect idea. He even made efforts to have the patent written only in his name, and told Bardeen and Brattain of his intentions. Some context for the kinda. I’m not impressed much by a guy who can crank out papers and be important in post-WW2 U.S. I have no idea what qualifies as great scientist here. Seems more like you have some “scientist’s legacy ruined by him being a bit of a jerk” angle.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Einstein: "Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” Keynes: "The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members." Biden: "I don't want my children to grow up in a jungle, a racial jungle." Again with the stupid trend in HN of judging opinions made 40-60-100-200-2000 years ago in the moral and social context of 2021.I am not saying he was correct or even mainstream but eugenics opinion were held by a longggg time for many literate people.You are free to judge him for it, that is OK, but have in mind that you will consider an asshole too in 100 years, for eating meat, for closing the borders of your country forbidding free transit for all humans, for destroying the habitat of countless of species and a long list of other known or unknown things. > Shockley was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 1982 United States Senate election in California. He ran on a single-issue platform of highlighting the "dysgenic threat" You are quoting wikipedia verbatim here and pass it as your own writing.Pretty intellectual dishonest. > Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. Check this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 See who is registered as the inventor.See the date it was filed. > I’m not impressed much by a guy who can crank out papers and be important in post-WW2 U.S. Thankfully your opinion is irrelevant.Ironic you are writing this from a device made in no small part by technology created by him
mjfl 6y ago
Eh, I don’t think this is true. People want to discredit Shockley because he was a big racist, but he was a legitimate scientist. PBS does this kind of smear to a lot of people who were morally questionable, like Henry Ford.
adrian_b 6y ago
Bardeen and Brattain have discovered experimentally the point-contact transistor, without really understanding how it functions. Shockley has really invented the bipolar junction transistor and the junction field-effect transistor, which are far more important electronic devices and which are still used today, unlike the point-contact transistor. Shockley has published theories of how his transistors function, which enabled the design of such devices. No matter what defects had Shockley as a human being, his legacy is much more important than that of Bardeen and Brattain. Even the fact that he was an awful manager had very positive results for everybody else, because he initially gathered together the best of the best in his company, who, after fleeing from him, founded then the most important semiconductor manufacturing companies in SV. Also, the first inventor of transistors was Lilienfeld, who invented a kind of metal-semiconductor FET in 1925 and a kind of depletion-mode metal-insulator-semiconductor FET in 1928. The Lilienfeld patents had very little influence at that time because the technology to make such transistors did not exist yet, but nevertheless his patents were a source of inspiration for the Bell team, who actually attempted to make FET transistors similar to those proposed by Lilienfeld, when they discovered by accident the point-contact transistor. The point-contact transistor was not a really useful device, but its great historical importance is that it triggered a lot of research in semiconductor devices and that the efforts made by Shockley to understand how the point-transistor can function lead him to the invention of the BJT and then of the JFET. The initial theories of transistors published by Shockley were extremely approximate, but they were usable in practice and their study enabled the appearance of an entire generation of electronics engineers specialized in semiconductor devices. The contributions of Bardeen and Brattain are not negligible, but they remain quite small compared to the huge contribution of Shockley. Someone could be a mass murderer, but nonetheless he/she could also publish some theory worth of a Nobel prize. Such qualities are unrelated and any theory or discovery must be judged only on its own merits, not on whether the inventor is a nice human or not.

cambalache 6y ago

> This article attributes the transistor to Shockley, but this is incorrect. The article does not claim such thing. John writes " After many further developments, in 1948 the physicist William Schockley patented transistors that use both holes and electrons to form a kind of switch. " Which it is correct as you can easily check here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 This not the case of a PHB robbing all the limelight from the engineers. Shockley was kinda of an asshole and had a big ego but he was a great scientist. And the junction transistor he individually designed and patented (see above) went on to be more successful than the point-contact transistor developed by Brattain and Bardeen. The Nobel prize was fairly awarded to the three of them.

warbaker 6y ago
John Bardeen is one of the greatest physicists of all time. He is the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in physics. Shockley may have been a talented scientist, but he did not invent the transistor, and tried to steal (not share in, but steal) the credit from the people who did. Newton was a jerk, but he invented modern physics. Shockley was also a jerk, but that doesn't mean he invented the transistor.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Why was Newton a jerk?
aspaceman 6y ago
> kinda an asshole “ My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment.” Shockley was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 1982 United States Senate election in California. He ran on a single-issue platform of highlighting the "dysgenic threat" Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. This angered Shockley, who thought his name should also be on the patents because the work was based on his field effect idea. He even made efforts to have the patent written only in his name, and told Bardeen and Brattain of his intentions. Some context for the kinda. I’m not impressed much by a guy who can crank out papers and be important in post-WW2 U.S. I have no idea what qualifies as great scientist here. Seems more like you have some “scientist’s legacy ruined by him being a bit of a jerk” angle.
- cambalache 6y ago
  Einstein: "Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” Keynes: "The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members." Biden: "I don't want my children to grow up in a jungle, a racial jungle." Again with the stupid trend in HN of judging opinions made 40-60-100-200-2000 years ago in the moral and social context of 2021.I am not saying he was correct or even mainstream but eugenics opinion were held by a longggg time for many literate people.You are free to judge him for it, that is OK, but have in mind that you will consider an asshole too in 100 years, for eating meat, for closing the borders of your country forbidding free transit for all humans, for destroying the habitat of countless of species and a long list of other known or unknown things. > Shockley was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 1982 United States Senate election in California. He ran on a single-issue platform of highlighting the "dysgenic threat" You are quoting wikipedia verbatim here and pass it as your own writing.Pretty intellectual dishonest. > Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. Check this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 https://patents.google.com/patent/US2569347 See who is registered as the inventor.See the date it was filed. > I’m not impressed much by a guy who can crank out papers and be important in post-WW2 U.S. Thankfully your opinion is irrelevant.Ironic you are writing this from a device made in no small part by technology created by him

mjfl 6y ago

Eh, I don’t think this is true. People want to discredit Shockley because he was a big racist, but he was a legitimate scientist. PBS does this kind of smear to a lot of people who were morally questionable, like Henry Ford.

adrian_b 6y ago

Bardeen and Brattain have discovered experimentally the point-contact transistor, without really understanding how it functions. Shockley has really invented the bipolar junction transistor and the junction field-effect transistor, which are far more important electronic devices and which are still used today, unlike the point-contact transistor. Shockley has published theories of how his transistors function, which enabled the design of such devices. No matter what defects had Shockley as a human being, his legacy is much more important than that of Bardeen and Brattain. Even the fact that he was an awful manager had very positive results for everybody else, because he initially gathered together the best of the best in his company, who, after fleeing from him, founded then the most important semiconductor manufacturing companies in SV. Also, the first inventor of transistors was Lilienfeld, who invented a kind of metal-semiconductor FET in 1925 and a kind of depletion-mode metal-insulator-semiconductor FET in 1928. The Lilienfeld patents had very little influence at that time because the technology to make such transistors did not exist yet, but nevertheless his patents were a source of inspiration for the Bell team, who actually attempted to make FET transistors similar to those proposed by Lilienfeld, when they discovered by accident the point-contact transistor. The point-contact transistor was not a really useful device, but its great historical importance is that it triggered a lot of research in semiconductor devices and that the efforts made by Shockley to understand how the point-transistor can function lead him to the invention of the BJT and then of the JFET. The initial theories of transistors published by Shockley were extremely approximate, but they were usable in practice and their study enabled the appearance of an entire generation of electronics engineers specialized in semiconductor devices. The contributions of Bardeen and Brattain are not negligible, but they remain quite small compared to the huge contribution of Shockley. Someone could be a mass murderer, but nonetheless he/she could also publish some theory worth of a Nobel prize. Such qualities are unrelated and any theory or discovery must be judged only on its own merits, not on whether the inventor is a nice human or not.