15 Sep
2012
15 Sep
'12
5:39 p.m.
On 15 Sep 2012 at 17:05, allison wrote:
I'm surprised you'd even take that swing.
For openers the most famous, the transistor.
Well, the bipolar point-contact transistor, at any rate. Julius
Lillenfeld had patented the FET in 1925. Apparently, Shockley wanted
to patent the FET but was informed by the Bell legal beagles that
that had already been done some 22 years earlier and might not be
patentable.
Which brings up a question. What constitutes the majority of
transistors in use today--bipolar junction or field-effect? My
money's on the FET simply because of the trillions present in
microelectronics.
And then there's the Lillenfeld invention of the electrolytic
capacitor, yet most high-school texts give BB+S the credit for
inventing the transistor and do not mention Lillenfeld.
Bell Labs should also receive some credit for the discovery of the
cosmic microwave background radiation (Penzias and Wilson worked for
BL at the time of the discovery).
Bell Labs has had a remarkable history of no fewer than 13 Nobel
laureates (7 prizes), the last one being in 2009 to Boyle and Smith
for CCDs. And I'm not counting Schanlow's work with MASERs while at
Bell.
Quite a remarkable organization in its heyday.
--Chuck