because the transistor is so fundamental, we probably could've worked towards it in hundreds of different ways than Bell Labs
but that's a big thing in tech circles - thinking a person or entity doing some technical feat is somehow a sign that they are otherworldly
Consider dual-space methods in crystallography. Herb Hauptman is credited with the discovery. My undergraduate advisor obliquely mentioned that he had done something similar in 1986 - obtain atom positions from direct methods, then do a few cycles of tangent refinement from the highest peaks. It reduces map noise considerably.
Computers were simply too slow at that time to use this as a general method of solving 1000-atom structures, so the approach remained an afterthought. But the possibilities were noted once the computing power was there.
I heard recently about the Scythe Project. Apparently, the scythe was never invented in some places, including India. That's a long time for the lucky guy to never show up.