[NOTE: Some say that the transistor was invented earlier in December. This confusion may be from the fact that Bardeen and Brattain had some successful experiments that proved some early theories of surface states. These experiments showed them that they were on the right track. A couple of those experiments took place in early to mid December. However, the experiment was conducted successfully on the afternoon of December 23rd.]
The driving force in why we developed the transistor was that, while the vacuum tube was effective in amplifying signals enabling the transmission of telephone conversation across any distance such as across the country, they were extremely unreliable, used too much power and produced too much heat.
In the 1930s, Bell Lab\'s director of research, Mervin Kelly, recognized that a better device was needed for the telephone business to continue to grow. He felt that the answer might lie in a strange class of materials called semiconductors but, in order to get there, they had to pioneer a whole new class of science.
After the end of World War II, Kelly put together a team of scientists to develop a solid-state semiconductor switch to replace the problematic vacuum tube. The team would use some of the advances in semiconductor research during the war that had made radar possible. A young, brilliant theoretician ,Bill Shockley, was selected as the team leader.
Shockley drafted Bell Lab\'s Walter Brattain, an experimental physicist who could build or fix just about anything, and hired theoretical physicist John Bardeen from the University of Minnesota. Shockley filled out his team with an eclectic mix of physicists, chemists and engineers. The group was diverse, yet close knit. Walter Brown, a physicist who joined the group in 1951, recalls hearing about exuberant parties and good lunches. Betty Sparks, Shockley\'s secretary, recalled the group\'s high spirits at her wedding to Morgan Sparks. They called their lab “Hells Bells Laboratory.”
In the spring of 1945, Shockley designed what he hoped would be the first semiconductor amplifier, relying on something called the "field effect." His device was a small cylinder coated thinly with silicon, mounted close to a small, metal plate. It was, as University of Illinois Electrical Engineer Nick Holonyak said, a crazy idea. Indeed, the device didn\'t work, and Shockley assigned Bardeen and Brattain to find out why. According to author Joel Shurkin, the two largely worked unsupervised; Shockley spent most of his time working alone at home.
Ensconced in Bell Labs\' Murray Hill facilities, Bardeen and Brattain began a great partnership. Bardeen, the theoretician, suggested experiments and interpreted the results, while Brattain built and ran the experiments. Technician Phil Foy recalls that as time went on with little success, tensions began to build within the lab group.
In the fall of 1947, author Lillian Hoddeson says, Brattain decided to try dunking the entire apparatus into a tub of water. Surprisingly, it worked... a little bit.
Brattain began to experiment with gold on germanium, eliminating the liquid layer on the theory that it was slowing down the device. It didn\'t work, but the team kept experimenting using that design as a starting point.
Shortly before Christmas, Bardeen had an historic insight. Everyone thought they knew how electrons behaved in crystals, but Bardeen discovered they were wrong. The electrons formed a barrier on the surface. His breakthrough was what they needed and the transistor resulted which transformed the world. The transistor sparked a new era of modern technical accomplishments from manned space flight and computers to portable radios and stereos. Today, billions of transistors are manufactured weekly and literally enable the world around us.
What was unique about the development of the transistor (beyond its obvious impact) is that it harnessed fundamental scientific pursuits to chart new paths.
Yes - it might have been easy to make a cheaper, smaller, or more efficient vacuum tube – and there were those in Bell labs working on exactly that – but they realized that to achieve the goal they needed a “solid” vacuum tube. To make this “solid state electronics” they needed to pioneer a new science, a new understanding of nature, and develop new technologies and techniques.
Bell Labs is doing this today in other areas and directions.
Here are two examples:
Quantum Computing. We know that we need faster and faster computers. Unfortunately we will reach a limit in increasing the speed of computing – determined in part with our ability to shrink electronics only so far.
While we and others are working to “shrink” electronics (like people worked at the time to improve vacuum tubes), we have another team at Bell Labs that, like our work on our transistor, is approaching a solution to this challenge from a new direction based on pioneering new sciences and innovations.
It is called “quantum computing” and, theoretically, it will produce a computer 100,000 times more powerful than computers today. Leveraging unique properties of the physics of quantum mechanics and a phenomena called “entanglement.”
In order to create this new way of computing, our researchers have had to build new materials and, in our approach, are using a Bell Labs-pioneered technique called Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) that builds materials one atom at a time. With materials build with MME, which only at Bell Labs’ Murray Hill is built to the purity required for this work, we are able to create new states of matter that have never existed before. Theoretically this technology could provide the platform with which to do quantum computing
This work is a long way from producing the first “quantum computer” (5 or more years) but if and when successful, it will revolutionize networking and electronics like the transistor did for the vacuum tube in its time. With consequences that we cannot foresee today.
Natural Communications: Another example of work in Bell Labs that is equally disruptive in nature is our work in nanotechnology with the goal of “Natural Communications.” Where the network becomes intelligent and has ‘eyes’, ‘ears’, etc. with which to see, experience, and interact with the physical world.
As background, we are already deploying virtually unlimited high quality bandwidth over any network, creating intelligent in the network where it recognizes you, know where you are, what your interests are, what content you subscribe to, and the best device to use to deliver these services, and new personalized multimedia experience through services, tools, and architectures that will enable the delivers of new services that truly blend, personalize and context-aware the user experience.
All enabled by Bell Labs research.
However the real work is in the fact that, while we have created this powerful network and solved the lastmile problem, we are still faced with the lastMETER problem.
How will we interface with this terabit, intelligent, service-rich network? Through today’s telephone? Today’s keyboard? Identifying ourselves with usernames and passwords?
Here is where nanotechnology comes in.
You walk into a room and the network recognizes you. You speak and it hears you. You ask for any service and the network can deliver it to you (ideally even anticipating your needs).
Why we communicate so much better face-to-face than over the phone? Because all of OUR sensors are involved – hearing, seeing, smelling.
When I meet with someone in person why I do not ask for their password or ID? Because I recognize the sight of their face and the sound of their voice and know who they are. If you met my dog, you could not pretend to be me. My dog, through all of his senses, will always know me from an imposter.
So we are working on nano-based innovations such as:
- Electronic noses to sense chemicals in the atmosphere or individuals’ pheromones of individuals,
- Mini-microphones high quality stereo microphones for tuned listening,
- Durable, small focusable lenses to capture video,
- Plastic electronics/displays that are video monitor that act like wallpaper,
- nano-based transmitters to network these sensors and display together,
- Nanobatteries to power this network,
- etc.
Nanotechnology refers to structures that have characteristic dimensions between one and 100 nanometers, which would make the largest of those devices and structures about a thousand times thinner than a human hair and about a hundred times smaller than a human red blood cell. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter; for comparison purposes, consider that the width of human hair is approximately 80,000 nanometers.
While most of the above-mentioned devices are not nano in size, they all have nano-based features and components that require very complex engineering and manufacturing techniques
This work gives the network “senses” – eyes, ears, nose, voice, etc.
Imagine this future. You walk into your living room and whatever information you need - tonight’s dinner, tomorrow’s weather, messages from your mother - will be waiting for you. There will be no need to turn on a TV, check email, or listen to a voice message. All of the devices that we use today to access information will eventually be obsolete because all communications technologies will be converged into one. All you’ll need to do is think about what you need and ask for it, and what you want will be there for you.
Think about it. No longer will people have to adjust to different network technologies, whether it’s wireless, IP, traditional voice. All networks, whatever they might be, will work together seamlessly and intelligently to deliver services and applications to every end user in a way that appears almost as an extension of the end user. It will feel as natural as the things you do today, only better. That\'s "natural communications."
Kind regards
Venke Østby
Communication Manager - Nordic & Baltic
Alcatel-Lucent
Mobile: +47 901 99 458