<P> Most transistors are made from very pure silicon or germanium, but certain other semiconductor materials can also be used . A transistor may have only one kind of charge carrier, in a field effect transistor, or may have two kinds of charge carriers in bipolar junction transistor devices . Compared with the vacuum tube, transistors are generally smaller, and require less power to operate . Certain vacuum tubes have advantages over transistors at very high operating frequencies or high operating voltages . Many types of transistors are made to standardized specifications by multiple manufacturers . </P> <P> The thermionic triode, a vacuum tube invented in 1907, enabled amplified radio technology and long - distance telephony . The triode, however, was a fragile device that consumed a substantial amount of power . In 1909 physicist William Eccles discovered the crystal diode oscillator . German physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent for a field - effect transistor (FET) in Canada in 1925, which was intended to be a solid - state replacement for the triode . Lilienfeld also filed identical patents in the United States in 1926 and 1928 . However, Lilienfeld did not publish any research articles about his devices nor did his patents cite any specific examples of a working prototype . Because the production of high - quality semiconductor materials was still decades away, Lilienfeld's solid - state amplifier ideas would not have found practical use in the 1920s and 1930s, even if such a device had been built . In 1934, German inventor Oskar Heil patented a similar device in Europe . </P> <P> From November 17, 1947, to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey of the United States performed experiments and observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium, a signal was produced with the output power greater than the input . Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw the potential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors . The term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance . According to Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, authors of a biography of John Bardeen, Shockley had proposed that Bell Labs' first patent for a transistor should be based on the field - effect and that he be named as the inventor . Having unearthed Lilienfeld's patents that went into obscurity years earlier, lawyers at Bell Labs advised against Shockley's proposal because the idea of a field - effect transistor that used an electric field as a "grid" was not new . Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the first point - contact transistor . In acknowledgement of this accomplishment, Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect". </P> <P> In 1948, the point - contact transistor was independently invented by German physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker while working at the Compagnie des Freins et Signaux, a Westinghouse subsidiary located in Paris . Mataré had previous experience in developing crystal rectifiers from silicon and germanium in the German radar effort during World War II . Using this knowledge, he began researching the phenomenon of "interference" in 1947 . By June 1948, witnessing currents flowing through point - contacts, Mataré produced consistent results using samples of germanium produced by Welker, similar to what Bardeen and Brattain had accomplished earlier in December 1947 . Realizing that Bell Labs' scientists had already invented the transistor before them, the company rushed to get its "transistron" into production for amplified use in France's telephone network . </P>

What year was the transistor invented and by what company
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