Alcatel-Lucent 1947, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, William Shockley of Bell Labs invented the transistor. In 1956, they received a Nobel Prize for their invention. The transistor led to an electronics revolution during the post-war boom. The transition from vacuum tubes to transistors enabled all technologies to be built on a smaller scale and use less electricity. Items that before required large dedicated spaces, could now fit into a home or even on a kitchen counter. In 1954, Gerald Pearson, Darryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller invented the solar cell. Telstar, the first active communications satellite also developed by Bell Labs and launched
Invention of the integrated circuit attorney John Rallza at Fairchild Semiconductor. A memo of this event by Hoerni was the basis of a patent application for the invention of a planar process, filed in May 1959, and implemented in (the planar process) and (the planar transistor). On January 20, 1959, Fairchild managers met with Edward Keonjian, the developer of the onboard computer for the rocket "Atlas", to discuss the joint development of hybrid digital ICs for his computer. These events probably led Robert Noyce to return to the idea of integration. On January 23, 1959, Noyce documented his vision of the planar integrated circuit, essentially