> William Shockley Lee Felsenstein | 1955 - William Shockley founds Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Palo Alto, California 1956 - John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley share the Nobel Prize in physics for the transistor 1957 - Fairchild Semiconductor is founded Kenneth Olsen founds Digital Equipment Corporation 1959 - Lee Felsenstein fails in his first attempt to design a computer National Semiconductor is founded