The Invention of the Transistor
Through out the first half of the twentieth century radio valves played an important role within electronic products. In 1947, however, scientists at the AT&T Bell Laboratories developed a device that would revolutionize the whole economy: the transistor.
The first demonstration of the transistor was carried by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, and the three would later receive the Physics Nobel Prize for their contribution to the project.
One of the most important discoveries related to the transistor was the fact that some materials were neither electrical conductors nor electrical resistors, they were in fact semi-conductors. Silicon, for instance, is a semi-conductor and William Shockley figured that he could change the properties of semi-conductors by “doping” it with certain substances.
The interesting fact about the invention of the transistor is that AT&T failed to transform it into innovation. The invention was obviously patented, but the organization was not able to find promptly an application for the new device. They did an outstanding job with the invention, but failed to commercialize it.
Precisely for that reason in 1952 AT&T decided to license out the transistor. For $ 25.000 companies like Texas Instruments, Sony and IBM acquired a technology that would produce billions of revenues in the coming years.
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I really wanted to leave this on your “About” page under the Betamax/VHS heading, but it works here as well. The story behind the story is that the initial innovation, 3/4″ video tape, originated, as I understand it, at Ampex. Ampex had captured the original market for video recording done within the context of the televsion production/broadcast industry. The first machines were huge, used 3″ tape, and were physically and psychologically appropriate for the engineering control rooms where they were housed. Someone within Ampex developed a much smaller version, but corporate Ampex couldn’t see the possibilities and sold the rights off to the Japanese.
Considering that Toyota is set to become the world’s number one automaker following a process that has some of the characteristics of disruptive innovation, one wonders if there is some cultural element at play which allows Japanese businesses to operate more flexibly around innovation?
I knew something about the Ampex story. Regarding the Japanese culture, I am not sure whether it is more flexible or not, but during the 80s and early 90s it certainly helped companies to pursue technological innovations, partly due to the governamental incentives.