A SURVEY OF EARLY POWER TRANSISTORS by Joe Knight THE POWER TRANSISTOR BELL TELEPHONE LABS AND WESTERN ELECTRIC
Above is a depiction of the Allentown, Pennsylvania facility, located on Union Blvd. where the first transistor production facility was built in 1951.  While this original Allentown facility was torn down and replaced with a new building in the 1980's, there is a fine monument on the back side of the present facility acknowledging this historical transistor first, as shown at right.  Bell Labs designed and developed all the four digit transistor number series (first w/ M prefix and later with just four digits, XXXX). After Western Electric began regular plant production of some early devices in late 1951, BTL began a process of testing the production process first and then passing it over to W.E. engineers officially at some later date for the actual manufacturing. Thus, all the 2NXX, 2NXXX & 2NXXXX transistors, although Bell Labs developed, were Western Electric manufactured. These are always identified as "W.E."  types, as were all the AT&T 'in-house' telephone system types: the 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 6A, etc.   Also, all "GA-" (Government Account), "GF-" and "F-" type semiconductors were also W.E. manufactured and are still identified as W.E. devices.
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