Dec 16, 2022
How the transistor helped create Silicon Valley
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Physicist William Shockley's homecoming to a little-known region of California helped transform the area into a technology hub.
On this day in 1947, scientists at Bell Labs, owned by AT&T — which had a telephone monopoly at the time — tweaked a new gadget the size of a shot glass to produce, basically, amplification. It marked the invention of the transistor.
My colleague David Brancaccio has been using the anniversary to tell the story of the transistor and how it led to the semiconductor revolution.
Part of that revolution was getting the technology from Bell Labs in New Jersey to what eventually became Silicon Valley. One man who made that move across the country played a key role.
This feature originally aired on “Marketplace Morning Report” on Dec. 15.
