A tiny slice of semiconducting material on which a transistor or an integrated circuit is formed; also called "microchip". A transistor is a compact solid-state device consisting of a semiconductor with three or more electrodes, performing the primary functions of an electron tube: amplification, switching, and detection, while using less power. The integrated circuit pattern is transferred to the microchip by photolithography. The first transistor -- a tiny slab of germanium, some bits of gold foil, a paper clip, and some pieces of plastic -- was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics. The transistor led to the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, and of the minicomputer in 1960. See silicon, ROM, disc, hardware, computer.