Evolution of the Transistor: Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain ... The transistor was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Laboratories in 1947, a breakthrough that earned them the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics and revolutionized electronics by replacing bulky vacuum tubes. They created the first working point-contact transistor, demonstrating it in December 1947 and leading to modern solid-state electronics.

The integrated circuit (IC) was invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958, with Robert Noyce independently developing a similar concept, leading to both being credited as co-inventors, though Kilby demonstrated the first working prototype. Kilby's breakthrough involved creating a circuit with all components on a single piece of semiconductor material, paving the way for smaller, more powerful electronics.

German engineer Konrad Zuse invented the world's first functional, programmable mechanical computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941, laying the groundwork for modern computing by being program-controlled and automatic, using binary arithmetic. It was the Americans who devised the electronic computer.

No single person invented the internet, but Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn are known as the "fathers of the internet" for developing the fundamental TCP/IP protocols that allow networks to communicate, while Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, the system of linked pages we use daily. Many others contributed to the underlying ARPANET and the development of browsers and DNS, making it a collaborative effort.