Fill in the word from the list:

Provided, fast, consumption, discovered, vacuum tube, development, electronic circuits, increased, reduced, transistor, appeared, semiconductor.

The transistor invented by American scientists W.Shockly, J. Bardeen and W.Brattain in 1948 completely replaced the (1). The transistor, a small piece of a (2) with three electrodes, had great advantages over the best vacuum tubes. It (3) the same functions as the vacuum tube but at (4) weight, cost, power (5), and with high reliability. With the invention of the (6) all essential circuit functions could be carried out inside solid bodies. The aim of creating (7) with entirely solid-state components had finally been realized. Early transistors could respond at a rate of a few million times a second. This was (8) enough to serve in radio circuits, but far below the speed needed for high speed computers or for microwave communication systems.

The progress in semiconductor technology led to the (9) of the integrated circuit (IC), which was (10) due to the efforts of John Kilby in 1958. There (11) a new field of science — integrated electronics. IC greatly reduced the size of devices, lowered manufacturing costs and at the same time they provided high speed and (12) reliability.