The Point Contact Transistor - The First Solid State Switch - Western Electric 2N110

About this Artwork John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invented the Point Contact transistor at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in 1947. The transistor was not announced until 1948, and it took a couple more years to create commercially producible and stable transistors. By the mid-1950's, the yearly production of transistors was only in the thousands; today, it is in the billions of billions. Western Electric Corporation (WeCo) was Bell Lab's manufacturing arm, and this 2N110 transistor was made at their Allentown plant over sixty years ago for use in AT&T's phone networks. The Point Contact transistor was based on germanium, not silicon. Wire whiskers made contact with the germanium. When current is applied to the base, current from collector to emitter is passed or blocked. Point Contact transistors are called such because they operate by using emitter and collector whisker wires that barely come in contact with a piece of germanium semiconductor. Because of this ve