Patents issued to Chester Carlson, TedHoff, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, inventors of the photocopier, microprocessor and personal computer, respectively, are examples.
The VAX remains the single most influential computer of all time--not just because of its pre-eminence among minis in the 1970s and 1980s, but because TedHoff so admired it that he used its architecture as the basis of the Intel 4004, the world's first microprocessor.