An invention that made music available everywhere...and then some

 On this day in 1947, three physicists—John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley—demonstrated a transistor to executives at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. That first transistor was crudely constructed from a razor blade, gold foil, an uncoiled paper clip, a piece of plastic, and a sliver of germanium crystal. Nine years later they received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention.

Thanks Writer's Almanac 2000