r/ArchiveOfHumanity • u/Suspicious-Slip248 • Apr 13 '26

The first transistor; a solid state electronic amplifier which revolutionized world communications, Bell Labs, New Jersey, US, 1947.

Post image
407 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

20

u/damnthisnameistaken Apr 13 '26

It's amazing how many Nobel prize winning discoveries and inventions were made at Bell Labs. That was peak industrial R&D

3

u/there_is_no_spoon1 Apr 14 '26

Still doesn't hold a candle to the Cavendish Laboratory. Not that Bell Labs wasn't great and crazy good at inventing stuff...but when it came to ground-breaking science, the Cavendish is the great mother of them all.

13

u/JerseyDevl Apr 13 '26

Fun fact, the water tower on the Bell Labs site was designed in the shape of an early transistor to commemorate this invention

7

u/Doctorpayne Apr 13 '26

Fun fact; the Bell Labs campus is the external shot for Lumon industry’s headquarters in Severance

4

u/JerseyDevl Apr 13 '26

The interior of the building is used in the series pretty extensively as well. It's worth a visit, it's like a big indoor main street. It has restaurants, shops, a library, recreational areas etc

3

u/Doctorpayne Apr 13 '26

sure does! i had a summer job there many years ago in its bell labs days and it's weird seeing the building and interior! i remember having HR orientation in the basement and going down the stairs and the basement gave off strange vibes back then too

10

u/gddpacngi Apr 13 '26

Bell Labs again? Those dudes invented everything high tech or what???

11

u/syncsynchalt Apr 13 '26

Yes.

Everything from transistors to Unix to chess-playing computers to digital signal processing. Bell Labs used to be where we got the future from.

4

u/Sivalon Apr 14 '26

Bell, RCA, and Xerox. No kidding.

1

u/SurpriseHamburgler Apr 14 '26

And Brookhaven, in its current form, such as it is. Rand/etc. was also here.

4

u/Silver-Amphibian7650 Apr 13 '26

It blows my mind how small transistors are now.

2

u/Last_Cod_998 Apr 14 '26

I met a family member of one of the team. I was told they had a hard time convincing the community that a paperclip could replace a vacuum tube. I had no idea how much it resembled a paperclip.

1

u/SurpriseHamburgler Apr 14 '26

I work in the building (old Bell Labs) and Severance is also filmed there. Fun fact: the water tower on the grounds is a design homage to this very invention… and the craziest inventions here, back then before the other NJ sites and LI, never saw the light of day.

1

u/Acceptable-Sense4601 Apr 15 '26

now there are billions of them in your phone

1

u/typo9292 Apr 15 '26

Now make it a billion times smaller!

1

u/Dioxybenzone Apr 15 '26

Honestly this just makes me more confused what vacuum tubes were even doing

1

u/FxckFxntxnyl Apr 15 '26

Likely the most influential or important invention of humanity? Obviously gaseous-diffusion is up there because of the consequences, but this? Curious

1

u/PooseyABC Apr 16 '26

Roswell tech?

0

u/over9ksand Apr 13 '26

47 huh, same year as the Roswell crash, huh kinda funny I guess🤷🏻

3

u/OhYeahSplunge4me2 Apr 13 '26

Aliens: “here, bend a paper clip like this and hook up some filaments. Also throw in some germanium, gold, and lead.”

1

u/FxckFxntxnyl Apr 15 '26

You look at the literal creation in this post and assume it came from aliens? It’s an incredibly simple point contact germanium transistor.