There is a book called Crustal Fier about the invention of the
transistor. In it, I read that Shockley wanted to make an FET, but
Brattain and Bardeen, working for him, semi-secretly switched to working
on a point-contact device which was easier to get working. As a result,
Brattain's name was left off the patent, leading to a bitter rift which,
aided by personality, eventually lead to the dissolution of Shockley
Transistor and the mutiny of a eight scientists who in 1957 started the
fair-headed stepchild company, which they called Fairchild
Semiconductor. Two of the founders of Fairchild, Robert Noyce and Gordon
Moore, left to found Intel, giving us semiconductor memory and
microprocessors.
So, while we may have lost 20 years due to the frustrations of working
with BJT over FET, the ensuing currents moved many others to fulfill
their potentials.
The rest of the story is even more detailed and nuanced...Crystal Fire,
the Birth of the Information Age.
Leigh/WA5ZNU
On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 9:34 pm, Tierra del Mar Labs wrote:
Kind'a like the Bi-Polar and the FET in the first days of the
transistor....who made the mistake of going the Bi-Polar way anyway, we
must have lost 20 years of technology to this.
73 Jeremy w7eme
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