Transistor

Scientists have invented a new transistor that can switch on and off 140 billion times a second, 12 times faster than transistors used in supercomputers, it was announced Monday. The "bipolar transistor," created at the AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., could have applications in computers, microwave communications and light-wave communications systems that use lasers. A transistor is a solid-state device that controls the flow of electrons in a circuit.

A newly developed transistor made of plastic operates at least 1,000 times as fast as previous transistors based on organic materials and is considered a significant step in the development of so-called molecular electronic devices. Industrial scientists caution that molecular electronic devices, such as the new transistor developed at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, are still too immature for everyday use.

The transistor age began 40 years ago this month when the human voice was amplified by an unlikely contraption that looked like the insides of a light bulb. No one said, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." The New York Times devoted just 4 1/2 inches at the bottom of page 46 to the public announcement the following summer. Nevertheless, that secret demonstration at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., on Dec. 23, 1947, marked the foundation of modern electronics.

It was 40 years ago this week that AT&T's Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., introduced the transistor--a tiny, reliable and relatively inexpensive substitute for the bulky, fragile vacuum tube. The announcement ushered in the "solid-state" revolution, spawning the semiconductor industry and making possible dramatic changes in communications, computers and other fields. For their achievement, physicists William Shockley, Walter H.

Walter H. Brattain, whose co-discovery of the transistor brought him both some small regret and the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, died Tuesday of the complications of Alzheimer's disease. He was 85 and died in a Seattle convalescent home. Brattain, John Bardeen and William Shockley, all research scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, N.J., shared the physics prize for their research in semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect in 1947.

International Business Machines on Tuesday announced experimental transistors that it said are the smallest in the world and the most powerful of their type. IBM said the "field-effect" transistors could some day make it possible to forecast weather or recognize human speech on machines the size of today's personal computers instead of giant mainframes.

A worker, left, examines in microscopic detail a wafer of transistors being made at Hexfet America, International Rectifier's new plant in Rancho California. The surgical-like clothing is required not for the worker's protection but to maintain the strict air-purity levels needed in the "clean room," where the incredibly tiny, sensitive parts are made. The new $90-million plant, which was dedicated this week, uses 200 gallons of water per minute.

A new transistor designed at the University of Illinois is the fastest in the world and should improve supercomputers and communication systems, the university said Thursday. Electrical engineer Hadis Morkoc, who led the team that designed the transistor, said the new electronic device should allow more information to be transmitted to and from satellites, and it should allow reception of very low-level radio signals.

A high-performance transistor based on a new operating principle that allows the transistor to control the flow of a much greater electric current than was hitherto possible has been developed by Energy Conversion Devices Inc. of Detroit, the company said today. The new device, the company's announcement said in Tokyo, "involves the first new fundamental transistor principle with wide device applications since the invention of . . . transistors in 1947."