WHO INVENTED THE TRANSISTOR AND WHEN WAS IT ORIGINALLY INVENTED?

The history of the invention of the transistor, as recorded in Colliers Encyclopedia of 1972 on page 408 - it is claimed that the collective work of Bell Telephone Laboratory scientists Dr. John Bardeen, Dr. Walter Brattain and William Shockley resulted in the invention!

Enter Jack Shulman, President of American Computer Company, who claims in a paper he published in Nexus Magazine of Australia, that the transistor came from a Government project.

Before anything else, I wish to commend Jack Shulman for his efforts in publishing his knowledge of many falsehoods and misrepresentation of the truth regarding the invention of the transistor as outlined in has Nexus Magazine story titled "Reverse Engineering Roswell UFO Technology". In this response I would like to make it clear that I am going to deal only with the matter pertaining to the Transistor and by whom, and when, it was invented. I do not intend to address any other unrelated matters except for the "who" and "when" of the matter, as well as some certain aspects which surround the search for the truth; I also intend to address certain statements made in Shulman's paper which I find need to be questioned in relation to the transistor.

It must be introduced at this stage that I have, over many years, thoroughly researched the early experimental and theoretical work carried out on crystals and those people involved in the study of the electrical science of crystallography of the years 1920 - 1950. I feel after reading Shulman's paper that he has omitted to research the subject in depth, hence I find his knowledge on the subject somewhat wanting.

In page 46, Nexus Magazine, Vol 6, No. 4, last paragraph (left column) Shulman states "I mentioned I grew up in the household of the head of Bell Labs, so I knew there was something strange about the transistor because I knew Bill Shockley and Bill Shockley was something of a witless buffoon. There is no way he could have invented the transistor. .......Now in 1947 doping things with boron was not easy. It required the sort of equipment that even Bell Labs in 1946 did not possess. They had this type of equipment at Lawrence Berkley Laboratories - but it would have taken thousands and thousands and thousands of man-hours to invent the transistor."

What a gross insult to the unlimited ingenuity of mankind to make such a sweeping statement. This immediately brings to my mind a quotation of one of New Zealand's more intelligent and visionary of Politicians, the Hon. Douglas Kidd, Minister of Energy just a few years back when he addressed an Energy Conference - thus: "You see, I am an optimist by nature, believing as an article of faith, that the genius of humankind is unlimited. To believe otherwise is to argue that our creator, in whose image we are surely made, was also limited." No, it did not take me thousands and thousands and thousands of man-hours and what's more I did not need a team of half a dozen assistants. I accomplished the project within five days with considerable success in 1933 at the age of thirteen years. (More on this further on.)

In yet another statement, we have Shulman making is "if you look back at it historically, what AT&T were claiming was that one day this 'genius', William Shockley, was working with a rectifier; he looked at it and he noticed that it had unusual propensities and there, bingo, he invented the transistor! He figured it out right there! And to verify that, the two other 'geniuses' that they got to help work on the transistor, Dr. Bardeen and Dr. Brattain, both said "Oh year, I remember a guy by the name of Case was (allegedly) talking about transistors in 1931, and I knew back then that we were going to have them".

This statement, to say the least, is highly confusing and ambiguous. How can both people utter such a statement simultaneously. What, in this statement, is being "verified" here? The fact that Shockley invented the transistor? And who is this guy Case? Shulman throws a name into the ball park without as much as identifying who this character was and what place he had in the game?! So somebody in 1931 called Case was talking about transistors and "I (who is I?) knew back then that we (who is we?) were going to have them (what are them?)!, and what is meant by the word "have"? Forgive me splitting hairs, but this entire statement is nothing other than unintelligible jabberwocky. After all, we are seeking the truth here on a matter of considerable scientific significance which must be treated as such.

Shulman continues "That is the history of the transistor at AT&T prior to 1948, other than claiming it was invented in December 1947 by Shockley. Anybody believe that story? Me neither. And I knew because the administrative head of the transistor project was Jack Morton - the man at whose house I was staying to go to school and whose sons I was friendly with - and he often commented on the fact that it was really a shame that those three idiots got responsibility for the transistor and he didn't. And I always wondered, because he too didn't possess the scientific ability to develop the transistor."

He goes on to state "In any event, for most of my young life I believed that the transistor had come from a government project and that they were just hiding its origins. Which government project, I did not realise until I saw the Shopkeeper's Notebook in the possession of my friend, the consultant."