Watched this excelent series of video's yesterday, here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkRwArnc1k It was especially interesting to see how Japan started trying to make transistors from nothing having to make their own high voltage oscillator, HV caps and using hot plates as resistors to drive an induction furnace to try and grow germanium crystals.
Also incredible was Japan's acheivement after being bombed back to the stone age after the war, in about 20 years. In quite a few cases two or three blokes in a shed went on to build big companies which supplied the IC makers with component parts.
Later video's cover the calculator wars as well as going into detail of some of the problems transistor makers faced, often loosing over 90% of transistor production due to impurities in the air.
Well worth a shuftie, Andy.