On Oct. 3, 1950, three scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey received a U.S. patent for what would become one of the most important inventions of the 20th century — the transistor. John Bardeen, ...

Why was the transistor such a big deal? Until the late 1940s, electronics relied on vacuum tubes, glass bulbs that used a delicate filament inside a vacuum to moderate the flow of electrons. Vacuum ...