RCA Supplementary Data

This page contains some further information on the history of RCA semiconductors. You can return to the RCA Home page here.

RCA Laboratories published a series of Industry Service Bulletins intended to inform RCA Licensees on developments being undertaken by RCA.

LB898 (attachments below) described the application developments presented to the industry by RCA at its Symposium beginning November 18th 1952 and described in the introduction to the bulletin as follows:

"RCA's tube and electronic equipment licensees were invited to visit the David Sarnoff Research Center of the RCA Laboratories Division at Princeton, N. J., to attend a Symposium constituting an engineering progress report on the status of transistor research. The program continued for a week, beginning November 18th, 1952.

The broad objective of the Symposium was to describe the experimental work which has been carried on, to show the state to which transistor research and circuit applications have advanced, and to indicate future possibilities in the use of transistors in electronics. Preliminary and experimental equipment was demonstrated which included transistors operating in radio and television receivers, miniature radio transmitters, audio amplifiers, and sections of electronic computers and musical devices. Many of the devices demonstrated partial or complete transistorizing of standard equipment while others were essentially new approaches to such equipment made possible by research and development based on the unique characteristics of the transistor.

Lectures and demonstrations were given describing the processes by which germanium is prepared and purified, and the technique used in growing germanium crystals. The doping, testing, and cutting of the crystals was discussed and illustrated. The making and testing of junction and point-contact transistors was also demonstrated. Detailed technical information on these subjects is contained in the twenty-four Industry Service Laboratory Bullet ins already issued on this general subject. The numbers and titles of these bulletins may be found in the Appendix.

In the demonstrated apparatus, three types of point-contact transistor and seven types of junction transistors were used. Four of these types, the three point-contact type and one of the junction types, will be available in small sample quantities from the RCA Tube Department. In this bulletin these will be referred to by their developmental numbers, TA-165, TA-166, TA-172 or TA-153. The other six types are still in the experimental stage. Bulletins on them will be issued as soon as the information is sufficiently crystallized to permit a useful technical description.

It is the purpose of this bulletin to present a brief description of each apparatus embodying experimental applications of transistors shown at the Symposium. It should be remembered, however, that the items described are experimental applications and are not intended to exemplify commercial designs."