Co-inventor of the transistor, along with William Shockley and John Bardeen, Brattain made one of the most consequential contributions to modern electronics.
Brattain's employment at Bell Laboratories in the years before World War II was first in the surface physics of tungsten and later in the surfaces of the semiconductors cuprous oxide and silicon. During World War II, Brattain devoted his time to developing methods of submarine detection under a contract with the National Defense Research Council at Columbia University.
Following the war, Brattain returned to Bell Laboratories and soon joined the semiconductor division of the newly organized Solid State Department of the laboratories. William Shockley was the director of the semiconductor division, and early in 1946 he initiated a general investigation of semiconductors that was intended to produce a practical solid state amplifier.
