The First Transistor

While looking for substitution tables I ran into this pic of the first transistor. Amazing, It could easily pass a work of art in a modern gallery. I find the zig-zagging lead particularly interesting (I'm assuming it's the base junction). I was assumming the shapes purpose was to increase capacitance, but it turns out the odd shape acted as a spring to suspend the large plastic triangle very gently over a germanium crystal.

It consisted of a plastic triangle lightly suspended above a germanium crystal which itself was sitting on a metal plate attached to a voltage source. A strip of gold was wrapped around the point of the triangle with a tiny gap cut into the gold at the precise point it came in contact with the germanium crystal. The germanium acted as a semiconductor so that a small electric current entering on one side of the gold strip came out the other side as a proportionately amplified current.

Damn, that's cool.

further reading:
http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/events/pointctrans.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor