No matter how sophisticated the technologies have grown, you can boil them down to two basic facts. Computing is based on the difference between zero and one. Electronics is based on the ability to turn electric current on and off. Today's highly advanced microcomputer, described in its simplest form, is a device that performs binary mathematical operations by turning current on and off. For a long time, these two phenomena- digital computing and electricity-weren't linked together. In fact, they've done so only in the past forty years. Tracking the histories of these two fields and their eventual merger is best done separately

Electricity has always been held in awe... from ancient Greek and Roman times when their gods threw thunder bolts around to the eighteenth century when one of the earliest electrical experiments was conducted. The experiment conducted then was with a glass jar, some tinfoil and a glass rod. Known as the Leyden jar experiment, the inventor set out to prove that electricity was a liquid which could be trapped and bottled. The resu1t? When someone created static - by quickly rubbing a glass rod against a piece of: wool - and then put the rod in the jar, static electricity could, in fact, be trapped. And a spark would fly from the pole sticking out of the jar to the finger which touched it. An interesting phenomenon which no one really understood. The experiment did, however, fascinate Benjamin Franklin who suspected that lightning was actually electricity in disguise. In the famous 1752 kite-to-key experiment that could have easily killed him, Franklin con- firmed his suspicion. By the early 1800s, experimenters had amassed a wealth of facts about electricity. But still, electrical current had not been put to constructive use. An experimenter named Michael Faraday had pieced together a crude forerunner of an electric motor in 1821, but Faraday didn't pursue the machine's development, and the electric motor idea was left idle until the century's end. Strictly speaking, the age of electronics began in 1883 with the discovery of the Edison effect. Known primarily as the father of the light bulb, Edison's greatest victory may well have been his efforts to increase the life of his early carbon-filament lamps. Edison found that when he introduced a metal electrode into a vacuum envelope containing the glowing filament that he created a current flow across the vacuum between the metal electrode and the filament.

Edison described as a ‘lusty, crusty and occasionally ruthless Midwesterner,’ did not pursue his discovery. Had he, Edison would have discovered that the current flowed in one direction and would have been on his way to developing radio receivers.

If discovery of the Edison effect was the first step on the road to developing today’s amplifier, the second step came in 1904 when John Ambrose Fleming invented the vacuum diode. While Fleming's device could detect radio-frequency waves (which Edison's could not), Fleming's device also had its shortcomings: it could not amplify the waves.

The third step on the road to amplification was taken by Lee de Forest. On October 25, 1906, de Forest applied for a patent on a three-element vacuum tube. Similar to Fleming's valve, de Forest's device had a control grid between the filament and the anode which allowed an operator to control the current flow This triode vacuum tube, more than any other development, made radio and television, as we know it today possible.

With Edwin Howard Armstrong's receiver, introduced six years later and based on de Forest's tube, the world got its first practical amplifier.

Armstrong's receiver element made commercial radio and television viable concerns. Radio blossomed. Automobile radios came into being and quickly gained popularity; sales went from 100,000 car radios in the early 1930s to 725,000 sets sold in 1934. Sets for the two-way police network were first installed in patrol cars in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1933. By 1940, there were 777 AM stations in the country and FM stations were taking root. Television, also a major user of vacuum tubes, started in the 1920s with the development of the camera tube, and finally showed its potential at the New York World's Fair in April 1939 when RCA began telecasting regularly from its Empire State Building transmitter.

By 1930, most of the basic vacuum tubes known today were around, although all were to undergo considerable refinement. The basic tube of 1930, a glass envelope with a plastic base, had points at its base which were plugged into sockets. Components and interconnecting hookup wires were hand-soldered between terminals on the sockets.

It was recognized that better wiring methods were needed. An inventor named Charles Ducas had patented a method of forming electroplated conductor patterns in copper, gold, or silver on a non-conductive base material. These metal-plated stenciled patterns were the forerunner of the printed circuit.

In the 1940s, while nation battled nation in World War II, the electronics industry entered upon a period of extraordinary creativity and growth. Stimulated by billions of defense dollars, it changed from a timid, consumer-oriented radio industry into a heroic producer of rugged, reliable, military equipment.

As a result of World War II the electronics industry began its long drive towards miniaturization. Miniaturization which crammed circuitry into tiny spaces.

For components, the years 1947 to 1960 were memorable. Packaging of electronics circuitry began to evolve from the thick to thin films, and the etched printed circuit was beginning to become the preeminent method of interconnection.

Build a better switch and the world will beat a pathway to your door? When Bell Telephone Laboratories announced the invention of the transistor, the general press treated the development almost indifferently. The New Your Times carried the news the next day July 1, 1948, on the next to last page of the paper.

The transistor was important because it allowed the magnification of electronic messages, as did vacuum tubes, but required much less current, did not generate as much heat, and was much smaller.

In a sense, The New Your Times missed the boat: three physicists later received the Nobel Prize for the transistor. But in another sense, the paper's estimation of the importance of the transistor's discovery reflected the reality of the times. It was a case of David meeting Goliath. In 1948, the vacuum tube was a highly sophisticated product.

Still, because of the transistor's small size and weight and low power consumption, the military became a customer immediately. Hearing aid manufacturers were also intrigued by the transistor; the first transistorized hearing aid was announced in February, 1953.

The transistor was a piece of extraordinary science that shifted the story of the electronics industry. But despite its genius, manufacturers did not start throwing away their vacuum tubes with its announcement. In fact, it was not at all clear in the beginning whether there was any thing very practical about it.

What tipped the scales fully towards the transistor was the influence of computers and their need for huge quantities of small, low-power switches.

World War II also had a major impact on the development of the next generation product the integrated circuit.

So important to the war effort was the advancement of solid-state detectors for radar that the U.S. government sponsored no fewer than 30 programs across the nation. A great deal of radar research centered on the properties of a curious class of elements known as semiconductors, so named because they conducted electricity more readily than an insulator, such as glass, but not as freely as a conductor, such as copper. Semi-conductors, such as a silicon, offered a particularly promising way of altering the current-carrying properties of solids and offered new hope for the dream of a solid-state replacement for the vacuum tube.

In his inaugural address in January 1961, President Kennedy envisioned the opening of a "New Frontier" The space program, culminating in man's first walk on the moon in July 1969, was an important part of Kennedy's new frontier.

The space program, in particular, glorified the current and potential use of electronic devices. During the 1960s, the U.S. electronics industry went through a decade of unparalleled growth. Now a basic industry in the U.S. economy, its growth, at a compound rate of nearly l5% yearly was well above the growth rate of industrial production generally

It was a time, too, when Patrick Haggerty then president of Texas Instruments, talked about the electronic system as being "no longer circuit-dominated" and pointed rather to a greater understanding of materials - particularly semiconductor materials. The integrated circuit, he predicted, would transform electronics just as the transistor had done before it.

The breakthrough for the IC industry came with the Minuteman missile program. The Minuteman improvement program demanded what was then the unprecedented production rate of 4,000 ICs a month.

In the 1960s, people began to better understand the technology of semiconductors. In IC processing, early manufacturers experimenting with particle accelerators discovered that ion implantation - a technique for modifying the properties of solids by implanting them with ions – allowed the adjustment of threshold voltages.

Another important IC fabrication advance was the creation of "clean rooms" to cut contamination of the silicon wafers by dust and other particles. First installed in 1967, these were the forerunners of today's clean rooms which have proved to be so necessary for large-scale integration (LSI).

IC lithography methods that were to later figure in planning for large scale integration in 1980 also got their start in the 1960s. Photomasks became so complex that circuit designers started going to computer aided design. By 1969, computer aided design for ICs was in universal use.

Special IC packages were also developed. First to appear in 1962 was the flat pack, a ceramic, plastic, or metal unit with flat ribbon leads coming out of two opposite sides. The dual-in-line package, a rectangular unit, originated in 1964.

The evolution of integrated circuits has already witnessed several generations. In the early 1970s, 1K memory chips (termed medium scale integration or MSI) became common; in the mid-1970s, the MSI generation was overrun by what came to be known as LSI chips. LSI chips contained 4K and 16K bits of memory Today we have the VLSI or very large-scale integration era. These stages have been complemented by developments in computers.

The earliest mechanized computer was no more than an adding machine that could both add and subtract; but could neither multiply or divide. Built by Blaise Pascal in 1642, this machine was an aid in adding columns of figures in his father's office. In 1673, Gottfried Leibniz completed a calculator that could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Machines using a version of Leibniz's device were used through World War II.

Perhaps the most significant work with early digital computers was done by the English mathematician Charles Babbage. In 1823, Babbage began work on his Difference Engine, a special-purpose calculator used to draw up tables of multiplications, logarithms, sines and cosines. Babbage never completed his Difference Engine, and in 1833 started work on another idea: the Analytical Engine. Conceived of as a general-purpose computer, this Analytical Engine machine was very close in design to the Mark I built at Harvard University: a century later.

Formal 1ogic, so necessary for the workings of digital computers, could not be satisfactorily explained mathematically before George Boole. In 1848, Boole published what is now the foundation of: symbolic logic. The theories covered in these 1848 writings made it possible to express logic in very simple algebraic systems. Modern computers make use of the Boolean binary systems, with their logic charts carrying out binary operations.

The year 1890 marked the beginnings of two modern computer companies: Burroughs and IBM. In that year, William Burroughs invented the popular office calculator, the Adding and Listing Machine, and Herman Hollerith helped solve the compilation problems of the 1890 United States Census with an early data processor.

From the late 19th century to mid-20th century, computers remained largely unchanged and functioned primarily as rather simple calculators. But during World War II dropping bombs from aircraft required accurate and rapid calculations. To speed up calculations which might otherwise take as 1ong as 30 days per trajectory, electromechanical digital computers came into use. The Automatic Sequence Controller (1ater known as the Mark I) was finished in 1944, took about 15 minutes to do a trajectory.

Impressed with the Mark I, but also realizing its limitations, John Mauchly began discussing the idea of using vacuum tubes to perform the needed calculations in 1942. In 1943, Mauchly signed a contract with the University of: Pennsylvania to develop the proposed Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer known as Eniac. Although too late to help with the war effort, the Eniac was dedicated in February 1946. The new computer used 18,000 vacuum tubes, occupied a room 30 by 50 feet, weighed 30 tons, used decimal instead of binary notation, and could perform multiplication in about 2.8 microseconds - some thousand times faster than electromechanical machines of the day

The end of WWII signaled the beginning of the growth period for electronic digital computers. Unencumbered by wartime secrecy, the technology flourished and the computer became a commercial product that soon changed the industrial world. By 1959, a number of applications were encouraging the user of computers. The Bank of America had show that the processing requirements of the banking industry could easily justify the expense of computers. Another application perfect for the computer was airline reservations.

Another significant milestone was reached in March 1951 when Whirlwind I was completed. Under the direction of Jay Forrester, the project engineers realized that digital computering techniques were needed for the real time analysis of data. The result - the Whirlwind I - operated in parallel fashion as opposed to serially. The result was faster processing. Another 1951 product introduction - the Univac I - led the industry in moving away from the vacuum tubes towards solid state devices.

One problem plaguing the computer industry at the end of the 1950s was the lack of: standard programming languages. By design, every computer had its own machine language. In May 1959, the Pentagon moved to establish a common programming language. A committee led by Grace Hopper, then a Navy captain, took just about a year to publish the Common Business Oriented Language, better known as COBOL.

With the introduction of: the Univac III in the early 1960s, Univac advanced the concept of a special executive, or operating system software, for controlling the computer.

During the sixties, computer software became ever more sophisticated. There was rapid growth of operating systems that supported a number of: innovative features, such as virtual memory and timesharing. In timesharing mode, many users could share a computer by dividing it operating time. The recognition that software was a requirement of computer ownership was the death knell for a hodgepodge of incompatible computers on the market. In their places, so-called computer families emerged which understood the same programs.

By the end of the 1960s, a newer, more compact computer - the mini-computer was gaining popularity. The minicomputer's smaller size and increased computing power largely reflected the greater technological sophistication of electronics - particularly transistors.

In the early 1960s, the value of installed computer equipment was estimated at $1 billion, up from only $227 million in 1955. By 1965 that total reached $6 billion. In 1970, almost $8.5 billion worth of computers and peripheral equipment were shipped. The biggest customer became the U.S. government. From almost a standing start in 1956, when only 90 computers served the government, the number grew in 10 years to 7,575 - almost one third of all the computers in the country.

Computers fanned the brushfire of automation that swept through the industrial world in the sixties. The National Biscuit Company for example, bought a Foxboro digital computer to oversee the making of: Saltine crackers and Oreo Cookies.. America’s largest employer, the automobile industry, embraced computers. By 1964, General Motors and Ford were using computer graphics to create perspective drawings of new car models in real time.

By the beginning of the 1970s, the computers had indeed come a long way from the days of the room sized Eniac. And the prerequisites for further advances - MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) technology and memory development were in place. It was only a matter of time before the computer-on-a-chip became reality. It turned up in the early 70’s when Intel introduced its 4004 microprocessor. The chip's early uses - mimicking an electric piano - brought still another problem to light: where to use it?

To Robert Noyce at Intel, the answer came back loud and clear. Noyce envisioned the microprocessor as the key to a radically different view of the nature of computers. In 1973, Noyce undoubtedly furrowed some brows at IBM headquarters when he announced to Business Week that "The future is obviously in decentralizing computer power."

Today with the advent of mini-computers and, more importantly personal computers - that has become the case.

How does Mostek fit in this picture? How have we contributed to the advances made within the industry? What, specifically are our contributions? Our roadmarks? Such is the subject of the following section entitled "Mostek Firsts."