Conclusion: Informatics and Microelectronics Are Mutually Dependent

Abstract

After 1965 informatics experienced a previously undreamt-of upsurge. The numbers of researchers, books, journals and scientific papers increased tenfold about every ten years. The mushrooming software industry, drawing in informatics graduates like moths to the flame, began to assert itself alongside the previously dominating hardware manufacturers. The microminiaturization that began in 1960 and led to microelectronics also made processing power and memory capacity cheaper by a factor of ten every ten years. Large mainframe systems right up to supercomputers were still needed for large-scale research.