Anderson chooses a job at Washington State College over a boring-sounding job at Westinghouse. Van Vleck intervenes to arrange an interview with William Shockley at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Anderson declines Washington and accepts a job offer from Shockley in 1949. A short history of Bell Labs follows, including the creation of a Solid-State Physics group after the war to, among other things, seek a replacement for vacuum tubes. A short description of solid-state physics follows. The team of Shockley, John Bardeen, and William Brattain invent the transistor and Shockley alienates everyone. Shockley tells Anderson to work on ferroelectric materials. Anderson dislikes the work but is personally impressed by Shockley as a physicist.