Comments on the ACC Roswell Transistor Story

by Robin J. Akins



The transistor is the most incredible and yet understated discovery of the 20th century.
The device cannot only be used as a switching device but as an amplifier
that can produce unity gain greater than one. In the physics of 1947 this
was impossible. In producing unity gain greater than one this miracle
device appeared to break the second law of thermal dynamics. I believe
the main reason that the Noble prize wasn't awarded until 1956 was that
no one knew how the device produced this miracle effect until 1954.
In 1954 a team of Bell scientists using a new powerful electron microscope
produced by IBM discovered that the Arsenic doped silicon was providing the
additional energy through the movement of not electrons but holes.

So whether they stumbled upon this receipe by accident or it came to
them from another source they would not have been looking for this effect
in 1947 as it was impossible, and or beyond the physics of the day.
For them to have even mixed Arsenic with sand in looking for
a uni-directional junction diode replacement for a vacuum tube seems
far-fetched.