Electronic Era

    The Start of the Modern Electronics Era

Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain at Bell    Labs - Brattain and Bardeen invented the bipolar transistor in 1947. Fig(1)

The first germanium bipolar transistor. Roughly 50 years later, electronics account for 10% (4 trillion dollars) of the world GDP.    Fig(2)

Electronics Milestones

1874 Braun invents the solid-state rectifier.

1906 DeForest invents triode vacuum tube.

1907-1927 First radio circuits developed from diodes and triodes.

1925 Lilienfeld field-effect device patent
filed.

1947 Bardeen and Brattain at Bell
Laboratories invent bipolar transistors.

1952 Commercial bipolar transistor
production at Texas Instruments.

1956 Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley
receive Nobel prize.

1958 Integrated circuit developed by Kilby and Noyce

1961 First commercial IC from Fairchild
Semiconductor

1963 IEEE formed from merger or IRE and AIEE

1968 First commercial IC opamp

1970 One transistor DRAM cell invented by
Dennard at IBM.

1971 :4004 Intel microprocessor introduced.

1978 First commercial 1-kilobit memory.

1974 :8080 microprocessor introduced.

1984 Megabit memory chip introduced.
Alferov, Kilby, and Kromer share Nobel
prize
2000