Walter Houser Brattain Walter Houser Brattain Walter Houser Brattain (; February 10, 1902 – October 13, 1987) was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Brattain devoted much of his life to research on surface states. Walter Brattain was born in Xiamen, Fujian, China, to American parents Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser Brattain. Ross R. Brattain was a teacher at the Ting-Wen Institute, a private school for Chinese boys. Both parents were graduates of Whitman
Board of Invention and Research working in six science and technology divisions, which assessed and evaluated invention proposals from the public, with a view to applying them to naval technology and tactics. During its operation from 1915 to 1918, the board evaluated over 41,000 submissions. In 1918, the BIR was superseded by the Scientific Research and Experiment Department, which operated until 1946 and was then re-organised into the Royal Naval Scientific Service. Board of Invention and Research The Board of Invention and Research (BIR) was a British expert-level committee, initiated by the Admiralty of the Royal Navy. Established in 1915, the board was responsible for