Arthur
Torsiglieri 
Arthur Torsiglieri was a patent lawyer at Bell Labs who
worked closely with the transistor patents. He wasn't there for the
very first patent applications
on the point-contact transistor and the junction transistor, but he
was involved with everything thereafter.
While Torsiglieri was in law school at Harvard he took
a course in patent law from a patent lawyer at AT&T. After
the course was over, the professor invited a select few from the class
to interview at Bell. Torsiglieri took the opportunity and was hired
in the spring of 1949.
Torsiglieri said that Bell was considered one of the foremost industrial
research laboratories in the world and so it was a very interesting
place to work. He became friendly with John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain, sometimes playing bridge with them. He worked with William
Shockley on his patents for many years, and was even offered a job to
go work at Shockley Semiconductor labs when Shockley founded the company.
Torsiglieri chose to stay on the east coast, and remained with Bell
for the rest of his career.
Torsiglieri said that in the 1970s, he received a phone
call from William Shockley. It was long after Shockley had left
Bell Labs, but Shockley had recently looked over his patents and had
a question. He wanted to know if there was any way his patent
for the junction transistor could override Brattain and Bardeen's patent
for the point-contact transistor. Torsiglieri told him that his patents
did not supercede Brattain and Bardeen's, and that seems to be the last
time Shockley tried to get sole responsibility for inventing the transistor.
Resources:
-- Arthur Torsiglieri, interview for "Transistorized!"
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