 This is an AI
colorization I made of the photo below. Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell
Labs), having been responsible for creating the first positive amplification
point
contact transistor just before Christmas 1947, continued to lead the way in
semiconductor research and new product announcements for many decades. This little
tidbit was tucked away at the bottom of page 120 in the May 1954 issue of Radio &
Television News magazine. It reported on "the purest substances in the world"
being created there in the form of 99.99999999% (aka 10N) pure germanium crystals,
which are used as seed for growing boules for device production. That's one rogue
impurity atom in ten billion germanium atoms. Modern
monocrystalline silicon
boules are typically 7N or better.
Bell Labs Germanium Refining
 The purest substances in the world - 99.99999999
per-cent pure - are being made at Bell Labs by means of a new and simple refining
method developed there. These substances have only one atom of impurity in ten billion
atoms of the material - about the same as a pinch of salt in 35 freight cars of
sugar. The new process is being used in refining germanium for transistors. W. G.
Pfann, left, inventor of the "zone-melting" process, is shown operating the equipment
while J. H. Scaff holds single crystal of purified germanium.
| Bell Telephone
Laboratories Infomercials |
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