Did Brattain disagree with Shockley about the transistor?
Oh, there was plenty of disagreement, but it's often misunderstood. Shockley was a brilliant theorist, no doubt, but he wanted to claim all the credit for the transistor idea. The truth is, Bardeen and I built the first working point-contact transistor on the bench in December 1947. Shockley wasn't even in the lab that day—he was at home. Later, he went off and invented the junction transistor on his own, which was a different gadget. The misconception is that we all worked together harmoniously. We didn't. I respected Shockley's mind, but he could be a difficult man. My critique is simple: the first transistor was an experimental discovery, not a theoretical prediction. We got lucky, but we made our own luck by getting our hands dirty. That's the real story, and it's in my Nobel lecture.
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