Watch This 1953 Documentary on the Transistor

No matter what device you are reading this article on, it would not be possible without the invention of the transistor nearly 70 years ago. Transistors are basically just mini-semiconductors that regulate voltage flow, and when many transistors are combined in large numbers, they create microprocessors (the Apple M1 chip has 16 billion transistors, for example).

Now, imagine being back in the early 1950s, where the mere concept of microprocessors, talking watches, and portable electronics were nothing more than imaginations of science fiction, and that’s the setting of this short fun 1953 documentary from AT&T’s Tech Archives about the transistor.

AT&T Tech Channel Archives describes the video as follows:

Made between the 1947 invention of the transistor at Bell Labs and the 1956 awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physics to its creators, this documentary is less about the discovery itself than its anticipated impact on technology and society. The intent of the film was clearly to give the public of that era their first understanding of what a transistor was and why it mattered so much.

Made for a general audience, the film provides a clear and concise presentation on technological developments that began with the vacuum tube, showing different types of transistors and explaining the significance in their ultimate replacement of tubes.

Included are visions of “things to come,” concepts and creations of how the small transistor might free up an encumbered world: the wrist radio, similar to Dick Tracy’s, but with a cool lapel sound speaker worn like a boutonniere; a portable TV set, which must have seemed astonishing at the time given the huge, heavy cabinetry required to accommodate the plethora of tubes inside 1950s TVs; and the “calculating machine,” or computer, whose size, we’re told, will one day be so reduced because of transistors that it will only require “a good-sized room” rather than a space the size of the Empire State Building. The concept of how small computers could be still remained decades away.

While The Transistor’s vision of the future seems somewhat quaint in retrospect, it captures a moment in time before the transistor became ubiquitous; a time when Bell Labs wanted the world to know that something important had occurred, something that was about to bring tremendous change to everyone’s daily lives.

If you enjoyed this video, don’t miss out on these amazing 1973 training videos for the Bell Labs Holmdel computing center. And if you’re into retro computing in general, don’t miss our archives on the topic for more mostly Apple-centric old school fun.