What Is A Transistor? Who Invented It?

An electronic device consisting of a small piece of semiconducting solid to which contact is made at appropriate places by three wires. The three parts resemble in function to the cathode anode and grid of a thermionic value. Transistors are compact and economic. the device was invented by Bardeen, Brattian and Shockley in 1948.

In electronics, different electronic devices are grouped to form a transistor which is used as and amplifier or oscillator in communications, control, and computer systems. Transistors were developed in 1948 after which they gradually replaced electronics thermionic vacuum tubes, magnetic amplifiers, specialized rotating machinery, and special capacitors as amplifiers.  A transistor is capable of performing several functions of the vacuum tube in electronic circuits. It is a solid-state device which has a tiny piece of a semi-conducting material, mostly germanium or silicon, to which at least three electronic connections are made. The basic components of the transistor can be compared to those of a triode vacuum tube. Among its components is emitter which corresponds to the heated cathode of the triode tube as the source of electrons.
American physicists Walter Houser Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Bradford Shockley were scientists who developed the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories. For their achievement, the trio shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics. Shockley is regarded as the originator and director of the research program in semi-conducting materials that led to the discovery of this group of devices.  Brattain and Bardeen invented and developed an important type of transistor.