This Day in History

October 3, 1950

Transistor Inventors Receive Patent

The U.S. Patent Office issued a patent to John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley for the transistor. The three AT&T Bell Laboratories researchers had successfully tested the first of their devices two years earlier. The transistor started a revolution in computer engineering that led to the development of the semiconductors, microprocessors, and integrated circuits common in modern computers.