Photos: The transistor turns 60

TechRepublic reports: "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."

Check out this TechRepublic photo gallery, it chronicles some of the history of the transistor.