The First Transistor
Next: December 23, 2026
The tiny switch inside everything.
The story
Where it comes from
On 23 December 1947, at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United States, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain showed their managers a small slab of germanium touched by two closely spaced gold contacts. A signal fed into one contact came out of the other up to 100 times stronger. William Shockley, who led their group, called it 'a magnificent Christmas present'. This Story marks that demonstration. Far smaller than the vacuum tubes it went on to replace, the transistor became the building block of radios, computers and phones.
How it's celebrated
There is no organised observance, but it is easy to mark: most things with a battery or a plug now depend on transistors. Visit a science or computing museum, take apart an old radio with a curious child, or send a card to the engineer who keeps your gadgets running.
Did you know
- Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Bardeen won it again in 1972, the only person to receive the physics prize twice.
- In 1955 the Tokyo company that became Sony launched the TR-55, Japan's first transistor radio, built with five transistors it had developed itself.
- In 1972 Intel opened its first production plant outside the United States in Penang, which grew into one of its largest assembly and test sites.
Coming up next
- Earthrise · December 24, 2026
- Christmas · December 25, 2026
- Boxing Day · December 26, 2026
- Charles Babbage's Birthday · December 26, 2026
- International Day of Epidemic Preparedness · December 27, 2026
- The First Public Film Screening · December 28, 2026