Right, Shockley wasn't bootstrapped by the government, but my memory is that the government & their ICBM's were the first actual customer for the transistor and

Right, Shockley wasn't bootstrapped by the government, but my memory is that the government & their ICBM's were the first actual customer for the transistor and that contract was both how and why it went from cat's whiskers on germanium to the planar silicon process. You're right though, I was probably wrong about relativity.