William B Shockley biography

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Born in Stanford, California, in 1910, William Shockley joined Bell Telephone in 1936 and experimented with semiconductors, leading to the invention and development of the transistor. He and his colleagues invented the point-contact transistor in 1947 and a more effective device, the junction transistor, in 1948. The device largely replaced the bulkier and less-efficient vacuum tube and ushered in the age of microminiature electronics.