The Transistor  mid 1940s - mid 1960s John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brittain: The First Transistor (1946) IBM: The IBM 7090 (used by US Air Force for early warning system) (1959) Sperry-Rand: The UNIVAC III (1962) IBM: System/360 (five different models) (1964) 1947: Chuck Yeager broke sound barrier. 1950: Korean War. 1963: John F. Kennedy assassinated.   Inventors, courtesy of http://www.lucent.com/minds/transistor/history.html UNIVAC, courtesy of http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/case1107.html Tim Youngman