the genius of photolithography (and its descendents) is that each chip is printed all at once, all the transistors at once over several steps for the several layers. This is what makes chips inexpensive.
The genius of photolithography is many things, I wouldn't say the wafer process is any more special than the statistical models that can predict where a nozzle needs to point to lay substract with more precision than the nozzle itself can provide or a number of other important inventions there.
using the same process that was used to make a single transistor (and package and attach connecting leads to it)...
...to make an entire circuit (and package and attach connecting leads to it)...
is the invention of the integrated circuit
and photolithography made that possible. It subsequently had a large number of important follow on innovations, but which were conceptually proper subsets of it.
had some other process made integrated circuits possible, that other process would have subsequently had many important innovations.
what flowed from photolithographic chip making is still flowing today.
