From an article by Barrie Gilbert of Gilbert Gain Cell fame. The Gears of Genius.
In that same mid-century year,
the transistor – the BJT – was gearing
up to change the world even
more dramatically. It’s known as a
Bell Labs “invention”, but its history
is very different. First, it was an
accidental discovery of bulk conduction,
in their fruitless attempt to
develop a field-effect device [29],
although an upstaged Shockley
must be credited with having predicted
minority-carrier transport.
Second, merchant-ship wireless telegraphers
were experimenting
with HF oscillators (that is, with
circuits that require power gain)
using two, differently-biased
whiskers on a chunk of galena as
early as 1915[my italics]
I have found no other information on the 1915 transistor. Numerous sources list Lilienfield as the inventor based on his 1925 patent. Also Heil in 1934. And the French in 1946, two years before Bell Labs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor
