The one thing I have learned by reading this comment is people seem to think that the original inventor should be given all of the credit for every single improvement or advancement on their invention,... forever. Just because someone invents something doesn't mean its useful. In many cases in history, it takes a third party to look at an invention that seems like a novelty, that is deemed neat but useless and say "Hey I can use this for something" to which they set out to improve on the invention to make it into something that can be of use to society. Not once in the video does it claim that Japan invented the transistor. America did,... and it was crap. They didn't even have a viable prototype, just a jumble of wires and semiconducting minerals,.. a bare bones proof of concept that was temperamental at best. The Japanese saw the opportunity and benefits in perfecting the technology, and unfortunately for American inventors the foreigners usually see the these opportunities and act on them, long before they realize their oversight. It even happens right at home, just like the Edison and Tesla fight for standardizing electrical distribution. The fact that Edison ever thought he was smarter and superior to Tesla was laughable. Furthermore, Edison also noted the properties of thermionic emission while experimenting with his electric lamp, had he not been so full of himself and fixated on the glowing filament producing light he could have invented the vacuum tube as well. It takes more than one person to truly invent something, someone comes up with an idea, and someone else says "hey we can use that for something!" By the way, your beloved Henry Ford used Dodge Brothers internal combustion engines in his early vehicles, and Chevrolet was a Swiss automotive engineer. It takes groups of people to make progress, not just one.

i'm literally using billions of transistors to learn how transistors were invented/made. Cool.

"Ten million people starved to death" The music: do do doooooo, la dee da

I've been an electronics design engineer for 32 years now and still continue to get a kick out of this kind of material... great video. Thanks!

That mirror on the needle trick is ingenious.

That excitement and enthusiasm of those senior scientists. I love those humble beginnings of scientific research. Thanks for the video.

The national ethos of Japan and being an ancient, disciplined civilization, all adding in achieving success. Audio equipment from Japan, vintage, or current is simply outstanding in design and operation

I'm a nerdy, nerdy, nerd and I love a good documentary This is a Good Documentary.

I like how these engineers were determined, resilient, and successful. This is good inspiration.

I really like how they show the process in making transistors using manual methods, like we could possibly make transistors in our kitchens. A great invention and a great documentary!

The Japanese didn't have the money, ut they had the intelligence, the enthousiasm, and the determination. Thumbs up !

Hats off to the Japanese determination and ingenuity! Their passion for technology is inspirational.

my deep respect to pioneers that showed unprecedented enthusiasm and ingenuity. such kind of the people are REAL heroes of the past war

Irreplaceable history footage and a credit to every person involved in inventing and improving solid state amplification. Just a brilliant story.

This might be a documentary about the birth of the Japanese electronic industry but it's the best documentary about the birth of the transistor itself I have ever seen. I did not know that it took Bell Labs began looking for an alternative to tube 10 years before the invention of the transistor. I also always thought that the first transistorized commercial pocket radio was created in Japan, I did not know that Texas Instrument got there first. And those pocket radios would be about $450 U.S. in today's money. They were the smart phones (or VCR. personal computer, televisons, ...etc) of their era.

One of the best documentaries I have watched in a long long time. Thank you for sharing.

The transistor was invented in 1947 at Bell Labs in New Jersey. In 1954, Texas Instruments of Dallas teamed up with Regency Electronics (its original name was Industrial Development Engineering Associates, or I.D.E.A.) of Indianapolis to manufacture the first pocket-size transistor radio.

Japan still makes the best components such as transistors and definitely capacitors. I’ve seen Japanese capacitors work within spec in a 20 year old computer.

I was amused by the part starting at 30:00 where sketches of production processes at RCA were used to "kickstart" the Japanese competition. During my working years before I retired, I was lucky to be part of a start-up factory in the southern U.S. that had some revolutionary design elements in my particular industry. These elements were born of experiences at a home factory in another state. At one point, a Japanese delegation wanted to tour our factory, and the company owner allowed it, but cameras were forbidden. About half a dozen gentlemen arrived in the delegation, and out came the sketch pads. They were all furiously drawing at high speed our layout and innovations. Being the engineer at the location, I was given instructions to let them see only so much. I had to physically block a small group of them with my body, to prevent them from seeing what we considered a highly innovative area of our process. That was over 30 years ago now.

This is an excellent documentary with rich human interest from original interviews with those involved, plus ample technical detail about the inventions and processes sufficient to provide a good layman's understanding of this chapter in history. I am quite moved by the Japanese determination and resourcefulness to succeed in this arena despite daunting financial and political handicaps.

I remember when I was a little kid in the early 60s nobody wanted anything that was made in Japan. Made in Japan meant it was something cheap and would fall apart easily. That sentiment was gone by 1968.

Old school skills on display.

Great documentary ,it proves that nothing of importance comes easy, i never realized that the beginning of a great company like SONY that brought us the transistor radio, walkman ,discman , Trinitron TV had such humble beginnings .We truly stand on the shoulders of giants

I've worked in Japanese companies making diodes, walkman, floppy disk drives and CDROMs during those old days, absorbing into the Japanese work culture with strong determination, hardwork and vision.

Do people even appreciate how strongly you must believe in your basic concepts to go through all these frustrating experiments? Anybody 'normal' would have given up. Not these guys. Their concept of 'normal' was that of trying until you succeed. Somehow, they 'knew' it could be done. Now we know it also. Except for those who think that it was always there. It wasn't. Actual people made it happen. Hats off.

Wow! These researchers were so dedicated and so clever an so tenacious as to be greatly admired! These are the shoulders we stand on today! Thanks for the video as you have shown us something to be proud of!

16:24 is amazing, using a mirror and light to control temperature with great precision manually. 21:04 zone melting with a bucket of water to control height. Conan-like.

seiichi denda's story about how they reflected light off the needle of a meter to get the temperature accurately enough is truly amazing! thxu for including this gem! ✨

That water bucket set to control the coil lift is really really clever

Transistor Radios ....remember the models from the 60's? .. where models touted the number of transistors inside (more being better) ... and the leather protective cases. These were very common Christmas presents for kids.

I loved hearing how they increased the resolution of the thermometer meter using reflected light. Ingenious!

My father used to hand assemble germanium transistors in the 50s for GE . He said the failure rate was so high that they had big oil drums to store all the bad ones . That was kept secret from the other manufactures as they were in a price war.

An amazing story of innovation and achievement. It is my opinion that the invention and development of the transistor and then integrated electronics technology was one of the greatest feats of the twentieth century. It lead to all the wonderful devices we use everywhere today in year 2018. And I watched it all happen over the years.

got to appreciate the applied engineering they did from first basic principals, using hot plate coils as resistors, making capacitors with drums filled with oil. Japanese McGyvers

A fascinating history. Thanks for the upload.

I find it amazing how this closely this story of Japanese excitement, refinement, and application of overlooked western technology mirrors that of FM synthesis. Moog and Arp dismissed the technology and it may have been abandoned, but bright minds at Yamaha had the vision to throw their backing behind the research to complete and commercialise the process, and ultimately Japan would dominate the industry.

This is amazing, I have been involved in electronics for over 40 years and still didn't realise it was the yanks who invented the Germanian Transistor.

The patent was for the chemistry explaining the action of the transistor junctions, etc. The actual device was a "Crystadyne" which had been in use for a couple of decades by amateur and shipboard radio operators. When Dr. Shockley found out about it, he was incensed, because he knew what it was, having seen one in operation.

everyone: we got no money so i guess we cant do anything japanese: we will use mirrors and garbage to make it work

Thank you very much to publish so great documentary!

This is the most precious video i have ever seen

As a SONY Professional video maintenance engineer this really is interesting. Thanks.

I’m just glad that there is some Japanese in me, I’m a mechanic and I have wrapped my body with towels and cut stuff many times and I still got 8 fingers!!!😜👨🏻‍🔧

Music Industry was fundamental for commercial use of transistors in the 50's.... never thought about that.

Remarkable footage. It was easier to produce germanium PNP type transistors then, as against NPN types using grown silicon crystals which we see today mostly. Amazing!

Great video, just stumbled upon it. When the transistor was invented, obviously engineers/scientists everywhere were interested but for some reason the Japanese became obsessed and saw it as a way to build the economy. Why did no other country have this obsession? (except USA, who invented it, of course) It is interesting to listen to the Japanese engineers, it is not something we study a lot. Japan has many of the best engineers in the world, but names are not well known. It is fun to listen to Japan vs USA engineers, all great but in different ways.

Patience and persistence is the key to success.

What an amazing document! Thanks for uploading!

Loved it thank you will watchbpart 2

it is just amazing, i would like to thank all of the people who made our life easy.

Cool training video! I’m impressed by this hard core science... Thanks for a down to earth Techincal aspects of crystal growth explained.

Priceless! Must be learnt by students in technical universitys worldwide.

I have been in electronics for years but this documentary is mind blowing.

Fascinating documentary. Love the accounts and memories of those involved, and the way they are translated into English.

I do like how Bell Labs offered even the 2nd and 3rd generation transistor technology to the world through symposiums!! It is not the best way to maximize profit $$ but it was the right thing to do! I am glad America/Bell Labs did it !!

So wonderful to see these lovely people worked so hard to build the things necessary to produce the items needed to reach their goal. Amazing people. Reminds me of other people that dreamed and designed, and became great...

Very well made documentary!!!

amazing story of Japanese hard-work and enthusiasm.

brings back many memories of my electronics school days. I remember going to Western Electronic Labs in NC ( want to say it was in Winston - Salem) I had sample of transistor with out the case. Wish I still had it.

Thank you for uploading this

An old technician told me he could look at Vacuum tubes of the same type and they all matched each other in specs, but transistors were all different even with the same numbers. This video explains why that is, Thanks!

For all of those interested I am currently re-capturing these for a new higher quality upload. This original capture was made back in 2007, on a sub par capture card. It was captured in MPEG and the deinterlacing was poor. The new captures will be done raw and deinterlaced and uploaded in h265. It should result in a sharper more clear picture. Keep in mind this tape is a copy off of a copy I found at our local Japanese cultural centre back when i was in high school made tape to tape with two VHS decks. The tape was new but not the best quality, and dubbed at LP/EP speed. I do not recall if the tape i copied from was recorded in LP/EP or SLP. Trying to preserve this in as best quality I can before the tape degrades. Heads on the VHS deck were cleaned prior to capture. I have been attempting to capture this over the past few months but have had issues with audio sync and frame drops that I thik I have figured out. I will not remove the original uploads simply re-upload and create a new playlist. No colour/contrast correction etc will be applied, only deinterlacing to produce a progressive upload. The video bitrate of the original captures was 1039kbps, limited by the Gigabytes of storage I had back in the day. Now with Terabytes at my disposal I can capture RAW to hopefully produce the best possible video for upload.

I love and admire their ingenuity. Necessity is the mother of invention. Ichiban!

Bravo! What a statement to determination and resourcefulness! This video makes one rather proud of the human spirit! Thanks for sharing and the very best of luck!

Thanx for sharing!

Amazing that the technology was so primitive in the beginning, yet worked.

Huge respect to all involved for this great invention.

Thanks for sharing

thank you for uploading this wonderful video

Electronics Engineering in post war japan was not for wimps!!! It was deadly. Awesome video. I learned a lot.

great doc....and stunningly funny too. the translator translating laughter slayed me

'Oscillating crystals' had been noted by amateur experimenters as far back as the 1920's. While using Galena and other types of rectifying detectors in crystal radio receivers, some experimenters had used a small DC bias to increase the sensitivity. Many of them reported that under certain conditions, the circuit would burst into oscillation and cause heterodynes. However, it seems no-one followed it up.

"We just shined a light onto the temperature gauge needle for 10x better accuracy", how clever these guys were is remarkable.

This is fascinating!!!

Very cool video, great to see the creative techniques the Japanese came up with.

Awesome documentary

No lone genius could have ever discovered something like the transistor on his own - major breakthroughs like this require enormous financial resources and the contributions of a team, focusing on all the interrelated fields.

Great ingenuity using what they had, not what they needed.

They don't talk about who created the process they used for growing single crystals. This was developed in the 1920s by Polish scientist Jan Czochralski.

Proves the old adage, “where there’s a will there is a way.” True passion and determination.

Very informative corrected a lot of misconceptions I had.

AT&T films brings back memories, I worked under the old Bell System. Employees took pride in their work and Ma Bell took care of it's workers.

Interesting to learn that Texas Instrument was an oil (fossil fuel) company and made the first transistor radio. Something which didn't drain the batteries, stay cold and weight much less. Crystal radio which take no battery at all already existed, but only one person could ear the weak sound on headphone. AM radio only need 1 diode to demodulate the audio. After that, the capacitor to get the envelope and resistor to discharge the capacitor are implicitly present in the headphones. The transistors, or vacuum tube, are just amplifying the signal. There is many transistors in cascade because each one amplify only 100 times max. At that time, the gain was anything between 20 and 100 even if they all came from the same production line. Each stage is limited to a gain of 20 by using a resistor on the emitter. This reduce the gain to an almost fix value no matter how the transistor can really amplify. Raising the power from 10 milliwatt like these first radio to 80 watts, we just need to add a few mode transistors. 10 mW * 20 = 200 mW of next stage. Then 4 watts on the next stage, then 80 watts on the third stage. The heat of the "naive" design would be quite large, so 2 transistor are needed on the final output stage. One pulling toward positive when the waveform is raising, the other pulling toward zero (or negative) when the wave shape goes down.

Awesome video! Just awesome.

A wonderful history.

38:45 It's wonderful to see the founder of Sony still alive at that time

to think... i remember a day when youtube would suggest Part 2 of a video after viewing Part 1. what a concept

I saw this video at 1991, NHK made. Quite nice.

Wow a prog that actually shows you something in detail -fascinating

Such a high level of Intelligence + tenacity. The masses benefit so much from the hard work of a relatively tiny number of dedicated people. These nerds awe me - and I write "nerds" with the utmost respect (not as a derogatory title but as the pure gold of humanity). Sure, profit was the goal at Sony, but still, hats off to the people that make things work.

Amazing history video about science, technology & economic history & cultural realities that paved the way to all this Telecom & technology so common today with smartphones etc We hold billions of transistors in our hands now, built on the shoulders of giants. An amazing history. Transistors radically improved energy efficiency of information technology vs vacuum tubes :)

Very informative video. Thank you

The first working device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by physicists John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Labs

I loved the video because it taught me history without getting bored. Thank you it was interesting. Where do you get these historic videos from?

I find it funny how the translator included the laughter at 19:10! As if that needed translation :)

Clever is an understatement.

Thank you for the information, it is very useful for me

16:00 Whoa, that's some impressive problem solving!

3:11 - "the vacuum tube's drawback, however, was its short lifespan". Yes, that was the one single downside. Power requirements, physical size, voltage requirements, gain, none of those were drawbacks.

Very interesting video.