The biggest contributors are the invention of radios and capacitor circuits. Then when making the calculator, people started to realize we could use computing devices to speed up calculating everything. With the desire to make things bigger and better, computers become very powerful. Now that every type of technology uses computers to come up with calculations that would take people years to get to, technology just keeps progressing faster because of... wanting to still make things faster and better.
That and war. When there is a war funds go into developing better ways to win. After a war is over, some companies find ways to apply it to the private sector to make more money.