The Binary Switching Unit aka Transistor

The development of the transistor made modern electronic computing possible.  As with many of the inventions discussed in this text, it was not what its inventor's originally intended to create.  In the 1940s and 1950s Bell Telephone Laboratories was arguably the most high-powered private sector research institute in the world.  John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley are generally credited with the invention of the modern transistor.  However, the true inventor, and holder of the original patent (Canadian) for a transistor is Julius Edgar Lilienfeld.  Lilienfeld was awarded a patent on October 22, 1925.  Why, then, isn't he canonized?  Lilienfeld did not publish any research articles about his devices

Picture from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Replica-of-first-transistor.jpg	Picture of the original: http://datapeak.net/computerhistory.htm	Picture of Shockley's Junction-transistor: http://datapeak.net/computerhistory.htm