TRANSISTOR RADIOS
Bell Labs was a cauldron of innovation. In addition to the transistor, it pioneered computer circuitry, laser technology, and cellular telephony. It was, however, less good at capitalizing on its inventions. As part of a regulated company that had a monopoly on most phone services, it was not hungry for new products, and it was legally restrained from leveraging its monopoly to enter other markets. In order to stave off public criticism and antitrust actions, it liberally licensed its patents to other companies. For the transistor, it set a remarkably low fee, $25,000, for any company that wanted to make them, and it even offered seminars explaining manufacturing techniques.
Despite these promiscuous policies, one fledgling firm had trouble wrangling a license: a Dallas-based oil exploration company that had reoriented and renamed itself Texas Instruments. Its executive vice president, Pat Haggerty, who would later take over the firm, had served in the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics and become convinced that electronics were about to transform almost all aspects of life. When he heard about transistors, he decided that Texas Instruments would find a way to exploit them. Unlike many established companies, it was bold enough to reinvent itself. But the folks at Bell Labs were, Haggerty recalled, “visibly amused at the effrontery of our conviction that we could develop the competence to compete in the field.” At least initially, Bell resisted selling Texas Instruments a license. “This business is not for you,” the firm was told. “We don’t think you can do it.”38
In the spring of 1952, Haggerty was finally able to convince Bell Labs to let Texas Instruments buy a license to manufacture transistors. He also hired away Gordon Teal, a chemical researcher who worked on one of Bell Labs’ long corridors near the semiconductor team. Teal was an expert at manipulating germanium, but by the time he joined Texas Instruments he had shifted his interest to silicon, a more plentiful element that could perform better at high temperatures. By May 1954 he was able to fabricate a silicon transistor that used the n-p-n junction architecture developed by Shockley.
Speaking at a conference that month, near the end of reading a thirty-one-page paper that almost put listeners to sleep, Teal shocked the audience by declaring, “Contrary to what my colleagues have told you about the bleak prospects for silicon transistors, I happen to have a few of them here in my pocket.” He proceeded to dunk a germanium transistor connected to a record player into a beaker of hot oil, causing it to die, and then did the same with one of his silicon transistors, during which Artie Shaw’s “Summit Ridge Drive” continued to blare undiminished. “Before the session ended,” Teal later said, “the astounded audience was scrambling for copies of the talk, which we just happened to bring along.”39
Innovation happens in stages. In the case of the transistor, first there was the invention, led by Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain. Next came the production, led by engineers such as Teal. Finally, and equally important, there were the entrepreneurs who figured out how to conjure up new markets. Teal’s plucky boss Pat Haggerty was a colorful case study of this third step in the innovation process.
Like Steve Jobs, Haggerty was able to project a reality distortion field that he used to push people to accomplish things they thought impossible. Transistors were being sold in 1954 to the military for about $16 apiece. But in order to break into the consumer market, Haggerty insisted that his engineers find a way to make them so that they could be sold for less than $3. They did. He also developed a Jobs-like knack, which would serve him then and in the future, for conjuring up devices that consumers did not yet know they needed but would soon find indispensable. In the case of the transistor, Haggerty came up with the idea of a small pocket radio. When he tried to convince RCA and other big firms that made tabletop radios to become a partner in the venture, they pointed out (rightly) that consumers were not demanding a pocket radio. But Haggerty understood the importance of spawning new markets rather than merely chasing old ones. He convinced a small Indianapolis company that built TV antenna boosters to join forces on what would be called the Regency TR-1 radio. Haggerty made the deal in June 1954 and, typically, insisted that the device be on the market by that November. It was.
The Regency radio, the size of a pack of index cards, used four transistors and sold for $49.95. It was initially marketed partly as a security item, now that the Russians had the atom bomb. “In event of an enemy attack, your Regency TR-1 will become one of your most valued possessions,” the first owner’s manual declared. But it quickly became an object of consumer desire and teenage obsession. Its plastic case came, iPod-like, in four colors: black, ivory, Mandarin Red, and Cloud Gray. Within a year, 100,000 had been sold, making it one of the most popular new products in history.40
Suddenly everyone in America knew what a transistor was. IBM’s chief Thomas Watson Jr. bought a hundred Regency radios and gave them to his top executives, telling them to get to work using transistors in computers.41
More fundamentally, the transistor radio became the first major example of a defining theme of the digital age: technology making devices personal. The radio was no longer a living-room appliance to be shared; it was a personal device that allowed you to listen to your own music where and when you wanted—even if it was music that your parents wanted to ban.
Indeed, there was a symbiotic relationship between the advent of the transistor radio and the rise of rock and roll. Elvis Presley’s first commercial recording, “That’s All Right,” came out at the same time as the Regency radio. The rebellious new music made every kid want a radio. And the fact that the radios could be taken to the beach or the basement, away from the disapproving ears and dial-controlling fingers of parents, allowed the music to flourish. “The only regret I have about the transistor is its use for rock and roll,” its coinventor Walter Brattain often lamented, presumably half in jest. Roger McGuinn, who became the lead singer of the Byrds, got a transistor radio for his thirteenth birthday, in 1955. “I heard Elvis,” he recalled. “It was a game changer for me.”42
The seeds were planted for a shift in perception of electronic technology, especially among the young. It would no longer be the province only of big corporations and the military. It could also empower individuality, personal freedom, creativity, and even a bit of a rebellious spirit.
SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE
One problem with successful teams, particularly intense ones, is that sometimes they break up. It takes a special type of leader—inspiring yet also nurturing, competitive yet collaborative—to hold such teams together. Shockley was not such a leader. Just the opposite. As he had shown when he went off on his own to devise the junction transistor, he could be competitive and secretive with his own coworkers. Another skill of great team leaders is the ability to instill a nonhierarchical esprit de corps. Shockley was bad at that as well. He was autocratic, often snuffing out spirit by quashing initiative. The great triumph of Brattain and Bardeen had come when Shockley was offering up a few suggestions but not micromanaging or bossing them. After that he became more overbearing.
During weekend golf games, Bardeen and Brattain would share their dismay about Shockley. At one point Brattain decided that Mervin Kelly, the president of Bell Labs, needed to be clued in. “Do you want to call him, or do you want me to?” he asked Bardeen. The task fell, not surprisingly, to the more voluble Brattain.