The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science
Travis E. Doom · Science and Public Policy · 2017
‘In 1947 there was one transistor in the world; twenty years later, several billion transistors were sold per year for about a dollar each. Today, a single chip containing more than a billion transistors costs a few hundred dollars. Even before the fortieth anniversary of Moore’s Law (2005), the semiconductor industry was making more transistors per year than the world’s farmers were growing grains of rice—and at lower unit cost by two orders of magnitude!’ The quote above taken from Cyrus Mody’s new book captures why scholars continue to study the history of microelectronics: it remains one of the most transformative technological developments emerging from the twentieth century. As Mody points out in the introduction, ‘the computer and electronics industry contributes more to the United States’ gross domestic product than any other manufacturing industry’. And yet Moore’s Law, not unlike the linear model, can be a frustrating thing to those engaged with the history of technology or science policy.