State of the Art: A Photographic History of the Integrated Circuit

A revolution has been taking place in electronics. Spurred by the invention of the transistor in 1947 and of the integrated circuit in the late 1950's and early 1960's, computers and other electronics have become smaller, cheaper, more powerful, and more versatile. The fruits of this revolution are all around us in the form of hundreds of inventions based on the IC: personal computers, robots, digital watches, video-cassette recorders, CAT scanners, the space shuttle, and, alas, smart bombs and cruise missiles. For better or worse, we have entered a new technological era.The star of this new era is the IC, chip, or microchip - one of the most important and, as the photos in this book reveal, beautiful inventions of the twentieth century. Here, then, is the story of the IC - of how it was invented, how it works, how it is made, and how it is used.