Right now, the research going into graphene has a great deal in common with the research done in the early days of the transistor. When the transistor was discovered, in 1947 at Bell Labs, the three scientists working on the problem knew they?d found something big, but refining the first transistor into a marketable product took years. What Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley initially created, the point-contact transistor, is entirely different than what semiconductor manufacturers build today.
