2007: The year's photo highlights

The transistor turned 60 in December, having been invented at Bell Labs in December 1947.

The very first transistor may not be much to look at, but the whole of modern digital life stems from it. Known as a "point contact transistor", it was commercially manufactured in Pennsylvania a few years after its invention. The transistor was nearly called a "triode", but that name lost out in a ballot at Bell Labs.

It took little over a decade for the integrated circuit to be constructed from those transistors. Integrated circuits will celebrate their 50th birthday next year.

Photo credit: LSI and the Computer History Museum