Bell Labs Auditorium in New York, West Street, Manhattan. The official announcement of the invention of the transistor. It was misunderstood at the time by many media outlets (and not only), but it would make a difference for the rest of the 20th century and beyond, enabling the incredible development of electronics, the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, with the web, computers, smartphones, and everything related to which we are now more than accustomed. On June 30, 1948, Bell Labs, in the presence of its employees William Bradford Shockley, Walter H. Brattain, and John Bardeen, officially announced the invention of the first solid-state amplifier, the transistor, to the press. The New York Times relegated the news to page 46, tiny under “News on Radio,” while TIME featured it as the first article in its science section under the headline “Little Brain Cell.” Bell Labs was a melting pot of innovations at the time. They were excellent at creating them, but less so at exploiting them. To avoid antitrust issues, they sell transistor patent licenses freely for as little as $25,000, including professional training in manufacturing techniques. This attracts the attention of several companies, including Texas Instruments, a Texas oil company that has recently refocused on electronics.
