RCA Transistor History Mueller Page 2

EARLY TRANSISTOR HISTORY AT RCA

Charles W. Mueller

Oral History – Early Production

of Junction Transistors at RCA

(Continued)

At this time our laboratory became very popular. Circuit engineers from other divisions of the RCA Laboratories would line up every evening to get the best transistors that we did not need and so we could give them transistors for the high frequency perfromance for which they were trying to build circuits. A high-frequency transistor was a device that was capable of amplification at a frequency of about 300 kilocycles. There was no stock room, no possibility of getting transistors anywhere else since our excess experimental transistors were their only source.

Convincing factory vacuum tube personnel that transistors had important possibilities was a slow job. My technician and I spent several months commuting every day from Princeton RCA Laboratories to the RCA plant at Harrison, New Jersey to help them set up a transistor line to make production quantities of transistors. - END -

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The scans are from an ad in the May 1953 Electronics magazine and represent one of the first public announcements of commercial availability of RCA transistors. The 2N34 is the TA153 and the 2N35 is the TA154 type units discussed by Dr. Mueller.

Early Transistor Publications Authored by Dr. Mueller

. “Germanium P-N-P Junction Transistors”, by L.D. Armstrong, J.I. Pantchechnikoff, C.W. Mueller, R.R. Law, Proceedings of I.R.E., Vol 40, Nov 1952.

“A P-N-P Triode Alloy Junction Transistor for Radio-Frequency Amplification”, by C.W. Mueller and J.I. Pankove, RCA Review, Dec 1953.

“Uniform Planar Alloy Junctions for Germanium Transistors”, by C.W. Mueller and N.H. Ditrick, RCA Review, March 1956.

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