#Walter Brattain

Tagged Walter Brattain · show all articles

A measured record drawing of the December 1947 point-contact transistor apparatus: a small germanium slab, a plastic wedge holding a slit strip of gold foil pressed onto its surface, with dimension lines marking the narrow gap between the two gold contact points, and a magnified detail view still in graphite construction lines below it

The Transistor Wasn't Invented Once — It Was Invented Twice

Bardeen and Brattain proved the point-contact effect worked in December 1947 without Shockley in the room. The industry runs on the junction device he built six weeks later, after being left off that patent.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 26, 2026 · 7 min read

Browse by Category

Surprise me →

All AI Hardware & Semiconductors 100 AI Agents & Systems 42 Foundation Models 30 Model Evaluation 22 AI Industry 12 AI Infrastructure 11 Edge AI & Electronics 9 AI Safety 9 AI Research 9 Open Models 8 History of Technology 5 Invention & Engineering 3 Industry Analysis 2 Datacenters & Infrastructure 2 Writing & Information 1 Structural Biology 1 Small & Edge Models 1 Semiconductor Markets 1 Security & Technology 1 Security 1 Scientific Revolution 1 Robotics & Embodied AI 1 Quantum Information 1 Planetary Science 1 Physics 1 Particle Physics 1 Origins & Astrobiology 1 Open-Weight Models 1 Neuroscience 1 Metrology 1 Mathematics & Computation 1 Materials Science 1 Labour & Technology 1 Interpretability 1 Institutions & State Capacity 1 Institutions & Economy 1 Inference Economics 1 Industrial Revolutions 1 Humanity & Technology 1 History of Computing 1 Governance & Policy 1 Evolution as Mechanism 1 Evolution & Ecology 1 Ethics of Technology 1 Energy & Civilization 1 Earth & Climate 1 Demography & Urbanization 1 Data & Training 1 Cumulative Culture 1 Cosmology 1 Condensed Matter 1 Chemistry & Catalysis 1 Alignment & Safety 1 Agriculture & Cities 1 Agent Evaluation 1 AI Security 1 AI Economics & Systems 1 AI & The Web 1