By Phin Upham
Although William Bradford Shockley was born in England, he spent most of his life in California. He earned a physics degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1932, and then shifted to his doctorate degree from MIT, which he completed in 1936. After schooling, he went to work for the Bell Telephone Company, which was at the cutting edge of technology for its time.
At Bell, Shockley was able to experiment with semiconductor technology. He also wrote several papers on the fundamentals of solid state physics. Shockley’s work caught the attention of the military when World War II broke out, and they contracted the young physicist to figure out how to counter submarine warfare.
His work brought him to the Pentagon for many sessions, where he was eventually asked by the War Department to provide an estimate of potential casualties the US could expect if boots were put on the Japanese mainland. His sober estimate of millions dead on the US side directly influenced the decision to drop the atomic bomb.
Shockley is most well known, however, for his invention of the transistor. Together with two colleagues from his research team, Shockley and his team were trying to find an alternative to vacuum tube amplifiers. Group rapport was excellent, and many ideas were thoroughly tested.
That is until it came time to patent the idea and Shockley’s name was left off the application. Angered by this apparent shunning, Shockley put his efforts into inventing the sandwich-like structure of the junction transistor, which would become a stable for electronics built all throughout the 1960s. While Shockley’s invention proved one of importance for the world, it led to the dissolution of the friendship his team at Bell Labs had shared.
Phin Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phin on his Phin Upham website or Twitter page.
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