William Shockley

Aron Vesper History 100X November 30, 2011

William Shockley was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century for his development of the greatest invention of our time: the transistor. Shockleys scientific career began in World War II where his use of statistics greatly enhanced the efficiency of American bombers. Shockleys greatest accomplishment, the development of the transistor, allowed the digital age of today to come to fruition. After developing the transistor Shockley started a business called Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, which produced electronic devices. His later years were spent as a professor at Stanford University. The world we live in today would not be the same without William Shockley. William Shockley was born February 13, 1910 in London, England but was raised in Palo Alto, California. He attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1932. Shockley went on to graduate school and graduated with his doctorate degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. After completing his school work, Shockley went on to conduct research for Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In 1942, during World War II, Bell Labs put Shockley on leave so that he, along with other leading scientists in the nation, could help the war effort. Shockley began working on military operations research during World War II, considerably improving the war efficiency of the United States. Based on Shockleys methodology, American bombers were hitting 95% of their targets by the end of the war. He may have also played a role in President Harry Trumans decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By July 1945, the United States was looking to end the war. The War Department asked Shockley to do a study on the total casualties that might result if the Allies invaded the Japanese mainland. Shockley concluded; We shall probably have to kill at least

five to 10 million Japanese. This might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including 400,000 to 800,000 killed. Less than a month later, looking to save American lives, President Truman dropped atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war ended in 1945, Shockley went back to Bell Labs and began working on improving electronic amplification devices (later to be named transistors) using semiconductors to replace the clumsy, fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. An electronic amplifier is a device used to increase the power of an electric signal. The amplifiers input signal, which is usually voltage or current, will have an amplified output signal. In music, amplifiers are used by converting sound into an electric signal, amplifying that signal, and creating an output that is louder than what the musician originally created. Vacuum tube amplifiers were being used at the time to build computers but they were the size of gymnasiums. Shockley was looking at improving electronic amplifications devices which would improve the marketability of computers. Shockley was assigned to lead a group of 34 scientists with a budget of half a million dollars a year to investigate these amplification devices. Shockley believed that power amplification could be achieved using external electric fields in order to affect the semiconductors conductivity by reducing it, which in turn would increase the output current leading to power amplification. When Shockleys experiments failed numerous times two of the other scientists in the group, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, went back to the theory of the problem. Shockley detached himself from the project perhaps disheartened by the fact that his idea had not worked. Shockley found himself distracted with new challenges, especially on researching the flow of electrons through alkali, similar to how alkaline batteries work today.

Shockley also began working more at home, resulting in less time spent with the other scientists in the laboratory. By the fall of 1947, Bardeen and Brattain were working on an amplification device that would later be called a point-contact transistor. Shockley would occasionally drop in to see what was happening and make suggestions. Bardeen and Brattains point-contact transistor was based on the idea of doping silicon with impurities and applying a voltage in order to obtain a large electron flow, which would result in power amplification. Bardeen and Brattain were experimentally trying to obtain power amplification, not being able to explain their experiments mathematically. However, in December 1947, Bardeen and Brattain successfully built the first point-contact transistor that produced an output voltage that was 4.5 times greater than the input voltage. When Shockley heard the news he was excited, but frustrated that he was not directly part of the invention. Shockley, upset that his name would not be on the patent, began working on a new transistor that would be more useful and easier to manufacture. On June 26, 1948, Bell Labs filed a patent application for Shockleys newly developed transistor called a junction transistor. Shockleys junction transistor used less power, produced more amplification, and had the potential to be manufactured at the microscopic level. Shockley was also able to put the mathematics of the transistor on paper, something that Bardeen and Brattain were not able to do. Shockley eventually wrote a book on the subject of transistors called Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors, which was published in 1950, and became a classic within 20th century scientific texts.

In 1956 Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California. He believed the transistor would revolutionize the electronic world and decided to build a business to profit off of his development of the device. Shockley hired a dozen of the brightest graduates of nearby universities to help him dominate the semiconductor industry. Shockley believed the future of transistor production was in silicon, even though most of the research up to that point had been achieved with transistors being produced using germanium. According to one of Shockleys researchers Gordon E. Moore, Shockley put the silicon in Silicon Valley. However, Shockleys business began to fall apart almost immediately. For reasons unknown, Shockley changed his mind about producing transistors and decided to instead build four-layer diodes. (Diodes are an electronic device that allows current to pass in one direction, but not to pass in the opposite direction. Diodes are most commonly found in LEDs or Light Emitting Diodes.) Most of Shockleys researchers believed that producing diodes was a mistake, and tension grew. By February 1957, less than five months after the company was formed, eight of Shockleys researchers began working behind his back producing transistors. By late 1957 they resigned from the company and founded their own company Fairchild Semiconductor, which is still in business today. Robert Noyce and Gordon E. Moore, two of the researchers who left Shockleys company for Fairchild Semiconductor, would later leave Fairchild Semiconductor to form Intel Corporation. With Fairchild Semiconductor controlling the transistor industry Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory was out of business by 1960.

In 1963 Shockley joined Stanford University where he was a professor of engineering and applied science until 1975. William Shockley died on August 12, 1989. Shockleys contributions in World War II were significant, and his greatest achievement, the development of the transistor has greatly changed the way we live our lives today. Transistors are a fundamental building block of many modern electronic devices. A computer processor can have up to 2.6 billion transistors. They are also found in common devices such as watches, ovens, airplanes, cars, fax machines, cameras, and cell phones. He will be remembered as one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century.

Bibliography Shurkin, Joel. Broken Genius; The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age. New York: Macmillan, 2006. Lojek, Bo. History of Semiconductor Engineering. New York: Springer, 2006. Shockley, William. Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors. New York: Van Nostrand, 1950.