Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "The Most Important Invention of the 20th Century: Transistors" video.
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The first solid state electronic component was the cats whisker detector in 1904, by an Indian, Jagadish Chandra Bose, in England. Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, a Pole, invented a solid state amplifier, what a transistor is, as mentioned in the vid, in the 1920s. The men at Bell Labs (a telephone company) developed the transistor to improve the sound of speech on long distance phone calls, using his patents. They based it on Lilienfeld's patents, not giving him credit, so hence were charlatans, not deserving a Nobel prize. The Japanese, Sony, took it from Bell, improving it to use in radio sets. The men at Bell Labs laughed at the Japanese who visited them thinking they could never do that. They did. Credit must also go to the Sony men. Sony was more back street outfit at the time.
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