Scanning the Transistor Issue

The Solid-State Devices Committee of the IRE and AIEE which organized this special issue felt it proper to honor the co-inventors of the transistor. To this end we have asked each gentleman to write a short essay, and these are given first place in the body of this issue. We delight in paying tribute to the superb experimental technique of Dr. Brattain, the deep theoretical understanding of Dr. Bardeen, and the creative genius of Dr. Shockley. There are sixteen invited papers in this issue. The honor to the authors of these papers is enhanced by the method by which they were chosen. A letter survey was conducted asking nationally prominent men in the field to suggest authors for topics we considered desirable to cover in this issue. In most cases the authors were selected by popular vote in this survey. Our list of topics also was enhanced by the same survey. Many thousands of man hours have gone into the preparation of this issue and we hope it will serve the field for many years to come as an important reference work.