The first transistor

It's not much to look at--the overriding impression is of several mangled paper clips clumsily soldered onto some chunky scrap metal--but really, the whole of modern digital life stems from it.

This was the very first transistor, invented at Bell Labs in December 1947. Known as a point contact transistor, it was first manufactured commercially a few years later, ironically enough, in a textbook example of a Rust Belt locale: Allentown, Pa.

From this first transistor arose, eventually, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 corridor, countless brands of desktop and laptop PCs, the PlayStation 3 and the iPhone...