Science & TechFact
Humanity's most-manufactured object was invented in 1947.
In December 1947, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs demonstrated the first working transistor, an electronic switch with no moving parts. They won the Nobel Prize for it in 1956. Today billions sit on a single chip in your phone, each smaller than a virus.
Useful: Without the transistor there would be no computer, no smartphone and no digital camera.
Source: en.wikipedia.org