Electron tubes have many disadvantages, such as large volume, heavy weight, high power consumption, high cost, short life, easy to break, high noise and so on. So the task of finding new amplification electronic components is placed in front of scientists.

Mervyn, director of vacuum tube division of Bell Laboratories Research Department and electron tube expert? Kelly (1894 ~? Pacing back and forth in the office-since the mid-1930s, he has been trying to overcome the shortcomings of electron tubes and invent new components.

1945 One day in the early summer, Kelly, who had been promoted to vice president of Bell Laboratories, met with shockley (19 10 ~ 1989), a solid-state physicist who also worked in Bell Laboratories, to discuss the problem of inventing new components with him.

Kelly's date with shockley was not accidental. "I think it is feasible in principle to use semiconductors instead of vacuum tubes as amplifiers." Shockley wrote this passage in the experimental notebook of 1939, 1939 on February 29th, which is the earliest written record of transistor thought. The background here is that crystal diodes have been born before.