WASHINGTON, Dec. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:

ELECTRONIC ADVANCE

Profile America — Monday, December 22nd. One of the most important inventions of modern times dates to this week in 1947. Three Bell Laboratory scientists successfully tested what would become the junction transistor, vital to our information age. The three shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956. The transistor replaced bulky, fragile vacuum tubes, which generated a lot of heat as they amplified a signal. As a Bell colleague who coined the term "transistor" said, "nature abhors the vacuum tube." The first application that caught the public's attention was the transistor radio. Now, transistors are found in every electronic device that we all take for granted. Today, there are nearly 28,000 electronics-focused stores in the U.S., with sales worth $56 billion annually. Profile America is in its18th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources:
Transistor development:
http://www.beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_transistor.html
Radio, TV and electronics stores: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ECN_2012_US_44I2&prodType=table#

Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button). 

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To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-census-bureau-daily-feature-for-december-22-300010772.html

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau