Kelly’s articulation of a solution—a product, in essence—was fairly straightforward, even if the methods for creating such a product remained obscure: Perhaps the Labs could fashion solid-state switches, or solid-state amplifiers, with no breakable parts that operated only by way of electric pulses, to replace the system’s proliferating relays and tubes. For the rest of his life Shockley considered Kelly’s lecture as the moment when a particular idea freed his ambition, and in many respects all modern technology, from its moorings.
