Miniaturization of Electronics

Miniaturization has made it possible for electronics to penetrate society more widely and deeply than ever before. Pocket calculators, electronic watches, miniature colour television receivers and the like are only some of the examples of the miniaturization of electronics of which the general public first became aware. Even before they came along, miniaturized electronic systems had made a significant impact in military, industrial, and commercial areas. Miniaturization helped in the exploration of space, in communications, in the control of machinery and processes, and in the handling and processing of data. The miniaturization of electronics is sometimes regarded as a somewhat late development that derives from the integrated circuit; yet miniaturization on the grounds of size, weight, and power requirements was under way long before the integrated circuit was invented and even before the transistor became commercially available. Valve (vacuum-tube) manufacturers were remarkably successful in producing miniature and subminiature valves, some of them smaller than a present-day power transistor; and the screen printing of resistive and other passive components, and the concept of electronic modules, helped to bring about smaller electronic systems. Yet the big acceleration towards microelectronics did indeed begin with the invention of the integrated circuit, when at first small and later large circuits were formed on a single chip of silicon. The net result was systems far larger and far more complex than could even have been dreamed of before.