- 1939 P-type and N-type semiconductors discovered in silicon at Bell Labs
- 1947 Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain demonstrate first point contact transistor
- 1949 Popular Mechanics predicts computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1 1/2 tons
- 1950 William Shockley's lab demonstrates first junction transistor
- 1952 Alloy junction transistor
- 1953 General Electric Company creates the Unijunction transistor
- 1954 Texas Instruments puts silicon transistors into production
- 1954 C. A. Lee at Bell Labs makes first diffused-base germanium mesa transistor with a cutoff frequency of 500 MHz
- 1955 IBM begins marketing its first transistorized computer, model 7090
- 1956 William Shockley invents the PNPN diode (Shockley diode, two of which, when packaged as a parallel pair connected in opposite directions are known as a DIAC)
- 1957 General Electric announces their commercial Silicon Controlled Rectifier, also known as the thyristor, which could switch 1000V and several hundred amps
- 1958 Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. market their first silicon diffusion mesa transistors to RCA
- 1958 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments demonstrates the first working integrated circuit in the laboratory on September 12th
- 1959 Planar process invented by Swiss physicist Jean Hoerni
- 1959 Texas Instruments and Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. independently develop the first commercial integrated circuits- Fairchild's version demonstrating the first with planar metallised interconnection.
- 1960 John Atalla at Bell labs develops the field effect transistor, and epitaxial growth technology for semiconductor crystals begins also at ATT Bell Labs
- 1961 Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. release their first commercial integrated circuit to the market
- 1961 Ferranti introduces Micronor I Diode-Transistor Logic
- 1962 Signetics introduces a range of Diode-Transistor Logic
- 1963 Fairchild introduce the 907 DTL logic gate, which used a mere four bipolar transistors
- 1963 CMOS logic circuit principles disclosed for the first time in U.S. patent 3,356,858 by Frank Wanlass of Fairchild Semiconductor
- 1964 Transistor-Transistor Logic introduced by Texas Instruments
- 1965 Gordon Moore discovers Moore's Law: The number of components on the most complex integrated circuit chip would double each year
- 1968 RCA introduces their CD4000 series CMOS logic family, which they called "COS/MOS"
- 1970s Molecular beam epitaxy invented at Bell labs
- 1971 Intel introduces the 4004 4-bit microprocessor, containing 2300 transistors, and considered to be the world's first single chip microprocessor. It was used on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft in 1972.
- 1975 Moore's Law slows, towards a doubling at present time about every 2 years
- 1975 IBM introduces their first "Personal Computer", the IBM 5100, which is considered to be the first portable PC (but not the first PC, which is attributed to the Altair 8800 kit launched by Ed Roberts in January 1975) based on large-scale integration (LSI): a board-level IBM "Palm" microcontroller made up from TTL-compatible 134-gate bipolar gate array technology called "Dutchess", with chips containing 60 three-input NAND gates, 40 four-input NAND gates, and 34 two-input NOR off-chip drivers, plus assorted TTL devices.
- 1978 Intel introduces the 8086 processor, which was the basis for all x86-compatible CPUs
- 2006 Intel to ship dual-core Itanium Montecito with 1.75 billion transistors on a chip
- 2010 Processors expected to reach 10 billion transistors per chip (Patrick Gelsinger, design manager for the 80486, InfoWorld CTO Forum, April 9, 2002)
- 2010-2015 Gordon Moore expects Moore's Law to slow again
- 2015-2025 Moore's Law reaches fundamental limitations
Time Line
Fonte: Physical Fabrication of Transistor
