But the proliferation of computer technology after mid-century accelerated enormously when, in 1947, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invented the transistor, a small wafer of germanium, silicon, or gallium arsenide. The transistor performed the same functions as a vacuum tube, but it was both vastly smaller and used only a fraction as much power as a vacuum tube. For this invention, Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.
