Bell Telephone Laboratories

The immense importance of Si in transistor technology stems from the chance discovery of the effect in Ge at Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, in 1947, and the brilliant theoretical and practical development of the device by J. Bardeen, W. H. Brattain and W. Shockley for which they were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics. A brief description of the physics and chemistry underlying transistor action in Si is given in the Panel (p. 332). 

William Shockley (seated), John Bardeen (standing, left), and Waller H. Braltain doing transistor research at Bell Telephone Laboratories (New York, 194S). (Corbis Corporation)... 

First solar cell developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories researchers. 

Bell Telephone Laboratories first demonstrates the transistor, a non-vacuum device that will eventually replace the conventional electron tubes. 

A type of assembly calculated to favour maximum galvanic action was developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories and is illustrated in Fig. 19.32. Here, the less noble metal is in the form of a wire wound in the grooves of a threaded specimen of the metal believed to be more noble. Good electrical contact is achieved by means of set screws covered with a protective coating. This assembly favours accumulation of corrosive liquids around the wire in the thread grooves. Corrosive damage is also favoured by the high ratio of surface to mass in the wire specimens. 

Prof. William P. Slichter, Chemical Physics Research Department, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07971, U.S.A. 

The start of the solid-state electronic industry is generally recognized as 1947 when Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated the transistor function with alloyed germanium. The first silicon transistor was introduced in 1954 by Texas Instruments and, in 1956, Bell Laboratories produced the first diffused junction obtained by doping. The first-solid state transistor diodes and resistors had a single electrical function and were (and still are) known as discrete devices. 

There is further emphasis on adsorption isotherms, the nature of the adsorption process, with measurements of heats of adsorption providing evidence for different adsorption processes - physical adsorption and activated adsorption -and surface mobility. We see the emergence of physics-based experimental methods for the study of adsorption, with Becker at Bell Telephone Laboratories applying thermionic emission methods and work function changes for alkali metal adsorption on tungsten. 

For a balanced historical record I should add that the late W. E. Blumberg has been cited to state (W. R. Dunham, personal communication) that One does not need the Aasa factor if one does not make the Aasa mistake, by which Bill meant to say that if one simulates powder spectra with proper energy matrix diagonalization (as he apparently did in the late 1960s in the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey), instead of with an analytical expression from perturbation theory, then the correction factor does not apply. What this all means I hope to make clear later in the course of this book. 

I was working at Bell Telephone Laboratories at that time. Much of the radar development came out of applied work in industrial laboratories, and so did microwave spectroscopy. I persuaded the Bell Laboratories to let me do microwave spectroscopy, and so it started at Bell Labs, but it also started at General Electric, where a friend of mine began it. He did a little bit of work, but then the General Electric people said, no, you must stop, it s not going to have any use for us, we have no applications. So this work had to stop at General Electric. At RCA, another important electrical company, a friend of mine started it there, and he worked on it for a while, and the company said, no, that s of no value to us, we won t pay you anything for it, you must stop. 

Bell Telephone Laboratories asked me to stop, because they said, look, there are some engineering things that we d like you to do that would be much more important to us. But I didn t want to do that, and I said, look, I really want to do some physics, and they let me do it. And I continued to do microwave spectroscopy, and pretty soon microwave spectroscopy was interesting enough to other physicists that I got a job at Columbia University. And so I moved to academia because industry wasn t all that interested in the field. 

Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey. 

In 1948, scientists of the Bell Telephone Laboratories perfected an improved form of the germanium rectifier known as a transistor (35, 36). In certain applications these transistors can compete successfully with vacuum tubes. They are already being used in hearing aids. The semiconductors of chief interest in transistor physics are germanium and silicon (36). 

A group at the Bell Telephone Laboratories has reported the formation of a radical derived from thymine by addition of a hydrogen atom to the 6 position of the thymine residue when a variety of forms of DNA are irradiated at low temperature either with ultraviolet light (300 nm average wavelength) or with gamma rays.120 Several other... 

CW operation of a ruby laser was achieved in early 1962 for the first time, at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Ref 1, p 14). Gas phase lasers had previously operated continuously, but these deliver only 3 milliwatts (Ref 2, p 16) as against 1 watt from solid-state CW lasers. Bell scientists revealed five new... 

Dr C.K.N. Patel et al of Bell Telephone Laboratories achieved laser action in the IR by passing an electric discharge thru CO2 and CO at very low pressure (about 0.2 torr). Continuous-wave laser action was obtained on a number of rotational transitions of a vibrational band of CO2, the strongest transition occurring at 10.6324 microns. 

The hydroxide process developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories (8,9) is used by most producers (11). It is usually operated at higher pressures than the carbonate process and quartz is grown at faster rates. Less precise temperature controls are needed. 

From R.Eisberg and R.Resnick (1985) Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei and Particles, John Wiley, New York. Courtesy of H.J.Williams, Bell Telephone Laboratories.) (b) magnetic domain patterns on the surface of an individual crystal of iron. (From W.J.Moore (1967) Seven Solid States,... 

The first solid-state transistor was made not from silicon but from the element below it in the Periodic Table germanium. This substance is also a semiconductor, and can be doped in the same way. William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen devised the germanium transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey in 1947. It was a crude and clunky device (Fig. VJa) - bigger than a single one of today s silicon chips, which can house millions of miniaturized transistors, diodes, and other components (Fig. Vjb). The three inventors shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956. 

Physical Properties. Tensile test pieces were cut with an ASTM T50 die, modified by putting a radius as specified in Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., drawing B604844, on the junction between the tongues and the reduced section. Dumbbells of this small size were used to facilitate simultaneous irradiation in the water-cooled cell under nitrogen. These dumbbells were pulled at 2 inches a minute for both tensile strength and elongation at rupture measurements at ambient temperature. 

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