A small semiconducting device capable of great amplification, the transistor, invented by Walter Houser Brattain and colleagues John Bardeen and William Shockley, revolutionized many aspects of modern society, especially systems of communication. In recognition of this work, Brattain, Bardeen, and Shockley were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics.

Brattain was born in Amoy, China, on February 10, 1902. He was the eldest of five children born to Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser Brattain. At the time of Walter's birth, his father was employed as a teacher in a school for Chinese boys. While Walter was still a young child, his family returned to the United States and settled in Washington state, where both of his parents' families had been pioneers. Brattain spent his childhood on a cattle ranch near the small town of Tonasket, where he attended public schools. He later told the editors of Those Inventive Americans...