When you think of Sony, you probably think of a technology company that’s been around forever. However, as [Asianometry] points out, it really formed in the tough years after World War II. The two people behind the company’s formation were an interesting pair. One of them was a visionary engineer and one was a consummate businessman.
While it is hard to imagine today, securing a license to produce transistors was difficult in the early days. What’s worse is, even with the license, it was not feasible to use the crude devices in a radio.
The devices were poor by today’s standards, and while transistors would work at audio frequencies for hearing aids, getting them to work at AM radio frequencies was a challenge. The Sony founders had to decide whether to use alloy transistors or grown crystal transistors.
Western Electric did not want to share its crystal-growing technology, so in 1954, the team created an alloy transistor. However, it failed to work well at radio frequencies, so they shifted to growing crystals, which seemed more amenable to scaling. One of the team tried using phosphorous and indium doping and created a transistor that could work at higher frequencies. But there was a problem.
Despite the transistor’s superior performance, they couldn’t make another one. Common wisdom at the time was that phosphorus doping was a dead end, but it had worked once. It just took time to find the right way to do it. By 1955, they produced usable transistors, even though the yield was at around 5%.
Texas Instruments beat them to market with a transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, in 195 ..
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