we invented the chip.
Bell Labs invented the transistor, and the first license to manufacture went to a Japanese company. When asked, they told Bell they planned to use it to make radios. [old anecdote]
Three Bell Labs scientists shared the 1956 Nobel in Physics for the transistor. They wound up estranged from each other.
The crankiest, William Shockley, wound up starting what we now know as silicon valley, but ironically he abandoned research in silicon, which led to an exodus of talent that formed Fairchild Semiconductor, a company often regarded as the fountainhead of semiconductor research and spinoff companies.
Walter Houser Brattain remained in pure research, including interdisciplinary research.
John Bardeen went on to share a second Nobel in Physics in 1972 for superconductivity research. From Wikipedia:
[snip] At the (1956) Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Brattain and Shockley received their awards that night from King Gustaf VI Adolf. Bardeen brought only one of his three children to the Nobel Prize ceremony. King Gustav chided Bardeen because of this, and Bardeen assured the King that the next time he would bring all his children to the ceremony. He kept his promise. [/snip]
Bardeen passed in 1991, but his later work (which continued until close to his death) may eventually warrant a third Nobel in physics. He is, currently, the only person to have won it twice.
"Jack St. Clair Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) was an American electrical engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce of Fairchild) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on December 10, 2000.[1] Kilby was also the co-inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer, for which he had the patents. He also had patents for seven other inventions.[2] "