41Bloomberg Businessweek / SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 THE ELEMENTS
Selenium $44.09 / kg U.S. marketLabs put him to work on a different radar project involving
microwave signals.
Finally, in 1948, Teal heard that germanium was a
candidate for the semiconductor material in Bell’s latest
attempts at a transistor. Transistors were meant to be an
improvement on the often-faulty relays then used to switch
and amplify the signals on phone lines; they were to be
purely electronic, not electromechanical. A theoretical phys-
icist named William Shockley, one of three scientists credited
with constructing the first transistor, was controlling Bell’s
research. He was looking at silicon and germanium as ele-
ments that might work as semiconductors. Teal wanted in.
Teal wrote several memos to management boasting of his
deep understanding of and mastery over germanium. It was
less complicated than silicon and easier to use if you used
it right—and he made the case, perhaps not so diplomati-
cally, that Shockley was doing it wrong. He was using poly-
crystalline samples, which Teal thought weren’t efficient. He
wanted to fabricate a smooth, beautiful, uniform single crys-
tal of germanium to use for transistors.
Management said no, many times. Shockley argued that
his lab’s germanium did the job just fine and Teal’s wouldn’t
make a difference. Teal was starting to seem like the office
weirdo, but he was undeterred. Finally, in September 1948,
he was talking to a colleague on the bus from Manhattan to
Bell’s headquarters in Summit, N.J., when the colleague said
he needed some germanium fabricated. Teal said he would
do it—and make it a single crystal for good measure.
Jack Morton, the Bell vice president in charge of the tran-
sistor project, gave Teal permission to buy more equipment
and use the metallurgical shop to perfect his germanium,
provided he stayed out of Shockley’s way. What followed
was a cloak-and-dagger operation that Teal later called “boot-
leg” research. He spent most of 1949 like so: He would roll
his equipment into a lab each night as the staff was punch-
ing out and work until 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., when he had to dis-
connect everything and stow it before the day workers came
back later in the morning. “This became pretty much a way
of life for me,” he later wrote in a journal article.
Teal’s research was brought up from underground
when it suddenly seemed useful to Shockley. In the mid-
dle of 1949, Shockley’s group developed the junction tran-
sistor, which relied on germanium crystals to work best.
But his poly crystalline germanium wasn’t doing the trick.
LikeWalterWhite in BreakingBad, Tealwas makingaproduct so much purer than anyone else’s that it seemed
almost unthinkable. At the end of 1949, Bell dedicated a lab
for growing crystals. Teal’s night shifts were behind him.
Bell’s goal was to create a transistor that would switch
seamlessly between two different types of semiconductor
materials, the p-type and the n-type. Teal was suddenly at
the center of everything. He’d found a way to use a tech-
nique called doping, in which germanium is infused with
some impurities—phosphorus, antimony, or arsenic would
work—to substantially increase the power and reach of a
semiconductor circuit. (Now also known as “activation,”
doping was developed, like most everything else about the
semiconductor, by many companies all working on the same
goal.) Teal’s innovation was to dope his superpure germa-
nium crystal while the crystal was still growing. In this way,
he and Shockley were able to grow the first n-p-n junction
transistor on April 20, 1950.
At the end of 1952, Teal left Bell Labs for Texas Instruments
Inc., then a new company focusing on transistor technology.
When the time finally came to convert from germanium to
silicon, which worked better under the high temperatures
of military-grade weaponry, Teal’s experience in fabricating
the perfect crystal gave him a head start over his competi-
tors. In his book Sparks of Genius, science historian Frederik
Nebeker tells the story of the 1954 national conference of
the Institute of Radio Engineers. Speaker after speaker at the
gathering cautioned, dejectedly, that the silicon transistor was
years away. Then Teal took the dais. “Contrary to the opin-
ions expressed in this morning’s session,” he said, the pro-
duction of the silicon transistor “will begin immediately.”
Then he reached into his pocket and said, “I happen to have
some here.” The crowd all but gasped. Texas Instruments’
sales climbed from $27 million in 1953 to $233 million in 1960.
From that moment on, the story of technology became the
story of silicon (and, in an increasing number of semiconduc-
tor applications, gallium nitride). But you never forget your
first love. Years after he was proved right for a short while
about germanium, Teal had much to say about the precari-
ousness of innovation—who comes up with what, whose ideas
build on whose, who gets the credit, and who makes it into
the history books. “In the pursuit of new knowledge,” he said
in 1960 in an address to the general assembly of the Texas
Academy of Science in Fort Worth, “the scientist has learned
that certain attitudes are helpful. ... He is relentless, dissatis-
fiedwithcurrentviews,anddrivenbya fiercecuriosity.” 34
Se
Selenium WHAT IF YOU EAT IT?
○Whatdoesit do?
Themineralis anessentialantioxidant.
Buttoomuchofit cancauseselenosis,a
conditionmarkedbyhairloss,brittle
nails,anda metallictasteinthemouth.○ Who eats selenium?
You, if you take a multivitamin.
○ What does it taste like?
It might taste like Brazil nuts, which have the
highest concentration of selenium, followed
by seafoods and organ meats.