The naming of the Transistor

[Daniel Nenni]

Fun fact:

John Pierce is a scientist and a wordsmith. He helped developed the technology that drives our communication satellites, he is a science fiction writer (under the name J.J. Coupling) -- and in 1949 he invented the name for the transistor.

Pierce began working at Bell Labs in 1937, just after finishing his grad degree at Caltech. While Pierce never worked directly for the Shockley lab he did work in close conjunction with Shockley and his projects -- early on in vacuum tubes, and later when they were working on the transistor. In fact, Pierce was one of the special few who first knew about the intriguing amplifier long before it was made public.

While working at Bell, Pierce designed and launched the first active communications satellite: Telstar 1. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke -- who is credited with first proposing satellite networks in 1945 -- has called Pierce one of the fathers of the communication satellite, saying he "designed, developed, and produced it, making real that which I and others thought only to write and dream about."

Resources:
-- Kennedy Maize. "Fathers of Communication Satellite Honored." Newsbytes News Network. October 3, 1995.
-- John Pierce, interview for "Transistorized!"
-- Crystal Fire by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson
-- Brattain, Walter H. "Genesis of the Transistor." The Physics Teacher (March 1968, 109-114).

John Pierce

the history of the most important invention of the 20th century: the transistor. Also... see the television documentary hosted by Ira Flatow, airing on local PBS stations in the fall of 1999. This site is a co-production of ScienCentral, Inc. and The American Institute of Physics, and the TV...

www.pbs.org

 

[hist78]

Fun fact:

John Pierce is a scientist and a wordsmith. He helped developed the technology that drives our communication satellites, he is a science fiction writer (under the name J.J. Coupling) -- and in 1949 he invented the name for the transistor.

Pierce began working at Bell Labs in 1937, just after finishing his grad degree at Caltech. While Pierce never worked directly for the Shockley lab he did work in close conjunction with Shockley and his projects -- early on in vacuum tubes, and later when they were working on the transistor. In fact, Pierce was one of the special few who first knew about the intriguing amplifier long before it was made public.

While working at Bell, Pierce designed and launched the first active communications satellite: Telstar 1. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke -- who is credited with first proposing satellite networks in 1945 -- has called Pierce one of the fathers of the communication satellite, saying he "designed, developed, and produced it, making real that which I and others thought only to write and dream about."

Resources:
-- Kennedy Maize. "Fathers of Communication Satellite Honored." Newsbytes News Network. October 3, 1995.
-- John Pierce, interview for "Transistorized!"
-- Crystal Fire by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson
-- Brattain, Walter H. "Genesis of the Transistor." The Physics Teacher (March 1968, 109-114).

John Pierce

the history of the most important invention of the 20th century: the transistor. Also... see the television documentary hosted by Ira Flatow, airing on local PBS stations in the fall of 1999. This site is a co-production of ScienCentral, Inc. and The American Institute of Physics, and the TV...

www.pbs.org

"Included are visions of “things to come,” concepts and creations of how the small transistor might free up an encumbered world: the wrist radio, similar to Dick Tracy’s, but with a cool lapel sound speaker worn like a boutonniere; a portable TV set, which must have seemed astonishing at the time given the huge, heavy cabinetry required to accommodate the plethora of tubes inside 1950s TVs; and the “calculating machine,” or computer, whose size, we’re told, will one day be so reduced because of transistors that it will only require “a good-sized room” rather than a space the size of the Empire State Building. The concept of how small computers could be still remained decades away."