Chips into Everything: Integrated Circuits

Abstract

On May 6, 1952, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer, a British radar engineer who worked at the UK’s Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, presented a paper on ‘Component Development in the United Kingdom’ at the Electronic Components Symposium in Washington. In it he said: ‘At this stage, I would like to take a peep into the future. With the advent of the transistor and the work in semiconductors generally, it seems now possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires. The block may consist of layers of insulating, conducting, rectifying and amplifying materials, the electrical functions being connected directly by cutting out areas of the various layers.’¹

If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get a half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it.

Gordon Moore