1951 Bell Telephone Laboratories Transistor Symposium

Introduction
Preparing the Symposium’s Book for PDF Download
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References

Introduction

Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) had an important realization: the transistor’s development would move a lot more quickly if they opened up the field to other companies. So in cooperation with the military services, BTL held the first symposium on Transistor electronics at the Murray Hill Laboratories in New Jersey, where the transistor was invented more than three years prior. Nearly 300 guests attended the 5-day event with sessions from September 17 to September 21, 1951.

Symposia Guests Bused to Event Every Day

“We realized that if this thing was as big as we thought, we couldn’t keep it to ourselves and we couldn’t make all the technical contributions. It was in our interest to spread it around. If you cast your bread on the water, sometimes it comes back angel food cake.”
Jack Morton, as interviewed in “The Improbable Years”, Electronics (19 February 1968) p. 81

Introduction to the tutorial sessions was by Jack Morton, well known for his leadership, ability to hire excellent researchers, and insatiable driving energy. There followed an array of excellent presentations on exciting topics by world-class technologists. Audience interest was kindled by early presentations and grew into a wave of galvanized enthusiasm as visions of possible new device, circuit, and system engineering opportunities unfolded. (In reality, the transistor industry was destined to attain even greater heights than the BTL symposia leadership imagined.)

As mentioned above, nearly 300 visitors were brought from New York to Murray Hill and returned daily in buses; these buses were also used to transport them to and from lunch each noon. At the end of the event, these visitors took home a compiled book titled “The Transistor” consisting of selected symposia event presentations (a very select and limited publication now available here for download). The attendees used this knowledge to begin a strategy of adopting transistors for military, university, and large and small electronics firms—a brilliant “seeding” strategy by BTL.

Preparing the Symposium’s Book for PDF Download

I have been seeking a copy of the symposium manual “The Transistor” for a few years. Finally, today, I am happy to say that I found a copy on loan at the University of Santa Clara University Library. I have scanned it, bookmarked it, cross-linked it, and made it available for PDF download here to help new readers…