This is the first time that I've seen a physical model of the first transistor. Interesting.

Now we can fit 12 billion of those things in a modern GPU

You are a fantastic educator. I took lots of physics as an undergrad and in graduate school. I had many excellent prof's but you are really good. If I had you maybe that C I got in 3Q physics (E&M) would have been an A. I'm a subscriber now. BTW, my father was a recent graduate of EE in the early 50's and worked for Shockley at Bell Labs. Same for my father in law, one the first employees at Fairchild in the 50's. This stuff is in my heritage.

This is an unbelievably helpful video for visualizing the functionality of a transistor. As a biomedical engineering student, I can say that this topic is not often taught well. Thanks!

Don't understand a single thing, but my god is this awesome to listen and watch

Just discovered this channel. . . so long day.

I've struggled for years to understand exactly how transistors work, and this is the first time that it seemed blindingly simple. Thank you so much!

This is just wonderful. I have a class test tomorrow and coming here helped me a lot, thanks!!

I'm trying to build one for an experiment and this was a huge help. Thank you!

That was great! Thank you for taking time to share and make the video.

I've watched a few different videos on transistors and one of my materials engineering classes went over semiconductors briefly, but I never completely and fundamentally understood how they work until I saw this video. Thank you so much and keep up the good work!

Really cool stuff. Bell Labs changed the world more than a few times. It would have been so incredible to work their during their golden age.

Your explanation of the transistor is the very best one I've ever seen. Your understanding is magnificent. I think you should do your best to get this video out there as much as possible. I will share it as much as I can.

Thanks for spreading your understandings

wow ! -- it is amazing to see that such a simple design revolutionized the human lives. This the best of the best channel on you tube. Thank you - Bill.

This video just explained to me in 4 minutes what i failed to grasp in my 4 years of engineering studies. Excellent explanation Sir!

after over 20 years as a successful, working audio engineer, recording, live sound and theatre and corporate, and film work, i finally found someone who took the science out of the science and made it understandable to me thank you, sir!

i love your vidoes man. its also cool you still read the comments on old videos!

I absolutely loved this video. I have a physics test coming up and this cleared my concepts. Thank you so much Bill!

Great video. I have never seen the transistor concept explained more clearly!

Thanks for the great video, I fully understand the concept. It' s really an amazing device.

Your videos are the best, thank you!

The transistor changed the lives of billions of people DRAMATICALLY, yet this video only has 300k views.

Great way to learn how a transistor works! If you never understood it this video shows it in a very simple and great way.

This video was enlightening. Thank you :)

I hope I never meet someone who would dislike this video.

I'm an electrical engineer and you made this sound so simple! great job man! I wish you were around when my head was buried in text books.

Neat and simple, just enough to get the idea. Very good.

Perfect, I'm taking electrician courses at the moment and this is very helpful. Hope to see more about electricity and magnetism.

I remember watching this when it came out long ago, finally need to know this for physics, this is easily the best way to learn!

Thanks for describing this, i've been wondering what the purpose of these transistors were. definitely helps my understanding towards them in my circuit analysis class.

Awesome explanation!

KZfaq needs more videos like these.

awesome explanation.... Thanks for the share

Grat video. Thanks!

very informative video ! thank you

Amazing video

This guy is good! Thanks!!!

Brilliant channel.

The voice of this man is so easy to listen to

Super! Thank you.

Very interesting and accessible!

Please keep going, I want to hear the rest of the story of the transistor! Fet, mos, nmos, bjt, jfet!!

wow. awesome videos.

Really, @engineerguy, I enjoy your videos big time!!!

My favorite engineer

Interesting video.

This video has been added to your Favorites. :)

thank you!

Awesome! Subscribed!

This is really well done, just like all your videos. Perhaps in a future video you can go into a bit more detail about the diode (around 2:06). I didn't quite get how the negative and positive charge carriers worked, or how the flow of electrons through them were any different than through a normal conductor. I did get that if the positive side of the diode points to positive power, then the current will flow. Many Thanks!!

Bill, best description of this seminal device developed by Brattain and Bardeen. I'm trying to put together a very detailed description of the development of this device, including the Physics, but I'm coming up short. Questions: 1. Do you know if the Germanium slab (BASE) was intrinsic or was it prepared ? On some X-sections a P layer appears on top of an N layer ? 2. Were the top gold contacts, the so-called point contacts, ohmic ? It seems this is where the action takes place. Is this how the P region was developed using the gold contacts ? Of course gold does not readily oxidise so it's hard to understand if the B-C and B-E diodes were something like Schottky diodes. 3. Do you know what is the spacing between the C and E gold contacts ? Comment: As I understand Bill S was leading the effort, but was not convinced of the path Brattain and Bardeen were taking, so they didn't tell him much. He was pretty mad with them, when they got the glory for the invention. But he redeemed himself and got the last laugh with his invention of the junction transistor including a rigorous mathematical description of how the device actually worked. You may not care for Bill S and some of his orthogonal ideas, but he does deserve a mention ;)

By employing sensible terminology coherently transitioned from element to element, without resorting to dumbing-down, you've empowered your students to better understand the complex hitherto thought unapproachable. You embody the truest notion of being teacher.

@JagdtygerII two-whisker detector diodes were probably just voltage-biased, but not amplifying. With two contacts, a diode's turn-on voltage could be canceled out by a separate power supply. In the mid 1950s someone (Banbury/Gebbie/Hogarth) managed to make a galena point-contact transistor. They found that amplification appeared when the whiskers were positioned within 0.0004" of each other. They had to etch the tips into very sharp points to do this.

What I'm curious about is HOW they came up with the hypothesis that such a contraption would even work. It's oddly specific to dope a small area of germanium, and use a razor blade to make the slightest of gaps in a gold film point contact. So they certainly had a solid understanding of the materials before making a rig to test it.

woah my comment is at the top :0 I finally need to really learn this, so glad I remembered watching this last year!

This is both the simplest and best description of how a transistor works that I have ever seen. Where were you when I was a first year student? :)

i dont understand a thing but i like watching it : D

I wonder just how many people truly understand just how much the transistor changed the world. When I was little transistors where just starting to take over. It was a cool time to be alive.

This video has great production value and does well for what it does: introducing the history and physics of a transistor. But it really misses to give understanding on how they function. In case you are interested, here's a basic explanation. A semiconductor isn't a material halfway between an insulator and a conductor. If one wants to get picky about it, no material is an insulator under enough voltage and we ought to only talk in terms of a continuum (or gradient) of resistance in different materials. We call an insulator to a material with such high resistance we can disregard any current through it for a given voltage (usually 5 volts, nowadays). What distinguishes a semiconductor is that its resistance varies depending on a physical phenomenon like light or heat. That non-fixed resistance what makes it special. Thus you can use it to increase or decrease the output voltage of a voltage divider (Google is your friend) without having a human turning knobs. By default, semiconducting materials are usually quite good conductors by themselves! Now, we can make them out of 2 flavours using doping which make one semiconductor have a bias towards either rejecting or absorbing electrons. It so happens that having both flavours together will cause the diode effect where the boundary will have an ever growing resistance when reverse fed. In transistors (the bipolar kind) there's a current entry terminal made of one flavour which bonds with an unlike flavour (for the base) and then an exit for the current. If the entry (collector) and base are reverse biased (as if a diode), then high resistance will build up. Otherwise, collector to emitter (the exit), through the base, resistance will be little and the transistor can conduct well.

Mind.........Blown!

Crazy how someone came up with that!!!!!

As I understand it, electron flow is from negative to positive (although, "hole" or charge flow) is from positive to negative. Thank you Ben Franklin.

I knew how this stuff was working by education, but after seeing this I now know why the symbol for a diode in electrical wiring looks like a triangle with a straight line under it

Another outstanding video. (but you forgot Dr Shockley)

I like your videos.

We JUST talked about this in my materials class! I knew exactly what was going on!

I would like to see this one-dimensional device.. oh wait I guess I couldn't see it if there was one! Great video however, thanks and keep up the good work.

I like your easy explanation about semiconductors. Would you like to make also a video about a solar cell?

Thanks

I’m going to try and make this

The Nuvistor, as far as I know, was the smallest vacuum tube ever mass produced and was done so by RCA. They were about the size of a thimble. Even still, you certainly wouldn't want to carry a pocket radio that utilized them. They used a steel envelope and got hotter than three yards of hell. My OCD is forcing me to point out that I do believe the diagram of the working transistor has a couple minor errors. The emitter and collector voltage (Ve and Vc respectively) designators are reversed. (Time stamp ~3:55). Don't get me wrong, I love the work Bill does. Including this and hope to see more of it.

As beautiful as a crystal radio. I'd love to see both things in one project.

@engineerguyvideo thanks for responding i dont really have a specific topic just i have been very distacted in school im 14 so for me its hard to concentrate but im still looking forward to what you do :)

@ 2:50 How do you change the charge carrier type of Germanium?

wow i got bored after a while, thank god i watched it on youtube and not in class.

yer awesome luke skywalker, thanks for this video

every time i watch one of your videos i get so curious about the world and i wonder why no one is talking about this. where should i go to learn more?

Cool

I finally know gow to use them now. About damn time huh?

Also what can you tell me about the "Flame Tube" diodes and amplifiers>?

Thank for the video. I still do not understand how can connecting the two diode together and making a small current flow from the forward biased diode to the reverse biased diode make a acurrent flow on the reverse biased diode?!

Hi! I'm currently studying science in college and want to go into engineering (most likely mechanical) when i apply to university this semester. i was just wondering which engineering discipline would be most appropriate if i want to do into a role where ill be doing lots of prototyping and hands on work (like robotics R&D). I really think mechanical is what i'm interested in, but its so hard to just pin down what kind of engineer i want to be already!

More on semi conductors please, other devices and cases, then microwave tubes twt cfa klystron, cfa etc

@engineerguyvideo where can i get this music?

This looks exactly like the electrical diagram symbol for the transistor

I got some parts of the video, but not exactly why it works. For example, why doesn't the right side give off a lesser current than the left side when the contact point is smaller? Is there less resistance on the right side?

Engineers: "one dimension please" Mathematicians: "nine dimensions please"

Come back, I need to learn more engineering from you :(

I hate to say this but, huh? This fundamental concept still eludes me. Even after I watch multiple explanations of Vacuum Tubes, transistors etc. Maybe it is just me. Thanks for these videos!

Please do a video in PNP, NPN and other types of transisters .

1:42 ehm. with eks. a battery. doesnt the power go from - to + ?

Well done, you made it a whle video without a cheesy joke I'm only joking of course, I secretly love them :P

I like the subtle music in the background. You probably like Bodies (hit the floor) right? I think it's in Gmaj. His shrugs indicate a humble modesty, a good quality in an engineer. He moves his mouth a lot while he talks, does that bother you also? I understand they used to have a background picture, but they removed it at your suggestion.

@engineerguyvideo it is still up, just a different channel.

-_- why can't i ever pick what i want to go to college for? Now im thinking about being an engineer :D Great videos :)

@engineerguyvideo It is actually. In the related videos, Illinois1867 has it up.

Love your content! Can you do more in-depth on vacuum tubes? Especially in terms of why musicians will spend $1,000’s on tubes vs $30 tubes because of their effect on tone? Or why certain amp makers use 6l6 vs el34 because of how they effect the tone. Another great great idea could be why certain mics such as the Neumann u87 costs $1,000’s whereas other mics are a fraction of the cost and why.

I have read that many of the old radio operators of the WWI era and after, made something similar using their Galena "cats whisker" diodes with a second whisker. How possible is that to accomplish? I do know that the Galena semiconductor is very voltage sensitive, but would it work??

So is this where the circuit symbol for diode came from?