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 silicon) chip, and the bulk material of the chip could be used for resistors. The standard Texas Instruments chip for the production of 25 (5×5) mesa transistors was 10×10 mm in size. Kilby cut it into five-transistor 10×1.6 mm strips, but later used not more than two of them. On September 12, he presented the first IC prototype, which was a single-transistor oscillator with a distributed RC feedback, repeating the idea and the circuit in the 1953 patent by Johnson. On September 19, he made the second prototype, a two-transistor trigger. He described these ICs, referencing the Johnson's patent, in