According to an IEEE Spectrum article titled "Noodling on Nuclear Engines," the genesis of some notable hardware companies happened informally over meals. In 1982, Joseph "Rod" Canion and two colleagues from Texas Instruments sat down at the House of Pies in Houston and used a placemat to sketch out what would become Compaq's portable PC. The anecdote highlights how a casual brainstorming session can seed a major product line.
The article also recalls that in 1996, Felix Zandman, founder of Vishay Intertechnology, dined at Husker Steak. The excerpt cuts off there, so no further details about that meeting are provided. The title hints at a connection to bimodal nuclear engines, but the source text does not elaborate on that topic, leaving the link between these anecdotes and nuclear technology unexplored.
These stories, while brief, underscore the serendipitous and low-tech beginnings of some computing and electronics hardware. For a publication like IEEE Spectrum, such origin tales often serve as a lead-in to a larger technical discussion, but in this case the supplied excerpt stops short of reaching it.