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Invention of the Vacuum Tube
Sir John Ambrose Fleming (1849–1945) was an English electrical engineer and physicist, known primarily for inventing in 1904 the first vacuum tube. It was also called a thermionic valve, vacuum diode, kenotron, thermionic tube, or Fleming valve. -
ENIAC- First (Digital) Computer Created
The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and was not completed until 1946. It used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. -
Invention of the Transistor
A team of scientists working for Bell Telephone Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, were working to discover a device to replace the then present vacuum tube technology. Vacuum tubes were the only technology available at the time to amplify signals or serve as switching devices in electronics. The problem was that they were expensive, consumed a lot of power, gave off too much heat, and were unreliable, causing a great deal of maintenance. -
Invention of the Integrated Circuit
There was a problem of numbers. Advanced circuits contained so many components and connections that they were virtually impossible to build. In the summer of 1958 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments found a solution to this problem. Kilby's idea was to make all the components and the chip out of the same block (monolith) of semiconductor material. -
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Small Scale Integration
Early 60’s saw the low density fabrication processes classified under Small Scale Integration (SSI) in which transistor count was limited to about 10. -
Robert Noyce further develops the IC Chip
Noyce's circuit solved several practical problems that Kilby's circuit had, mainly the problem of interconnecting all the components on the chip. This was done by adding the metal as a final layer and then removing some of it so that the wires needed to connect the components were formed. -
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Medium Scale Integration
Medium Scale Integration in the late 60’s when around 100 transistors could be placed on a single chip. -
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Large Scale Integration
Early seventies marked the growth of transistor count to about 1000 per chip called the Large Scale Integration. -
Invention of Microprocessors
Microprocessors were invented by - Ted Hoff, along with a handful of visionary colleagues working at a young Silicon Valley start-up called Intel. The first microprocessor was called the Intel 4004. -
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Very Large Scale Integration
By mid eighties, the transistor count on a single chip had already exceeded 1000 and hence came the age of Very Large Scale Integration or VLSI.
