All companies have to start somewhere, and it takes only a single company or small group of companies to jumpstart an entire industry. Looking back in time, we see that it was not even a company but an individual by the name of Alexander Graham Bell who, with the invention of the telephone, started the entire industry of telecommunications. More recently, companies like Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation pioneered the semiconductor industry with the invention of the microchip, the central component of all computers and most high-tech electronics gear.