Three scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories,
William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen demonstrate
their new invention of the point-contact transistor amplifier,
a voltage and current amplifier, which, in contrast to the vacuum
tube it replaced, is an arrangement of semiconductor materials
sharing common physical boundaries. A semiconductor is a solid
material, e.g., silicon, in which certain induced impurities enhance
its conductive properties. The name transistor is short for "transfer
resistance". (Miniaturization of electronic circuits via
the transistor is a key development making personal desktop computers
small, reliable, and affordable.)