With unit cost falling as the number of components per circuit rises, by 1975 economics may dictate squeezing as many as 65 000 components on a single silicon chip. Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers—or at least terminals connected to a central computer—automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment. The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today. But the biggest potential lies in the production of large systems. In telephone communications, integrated circuits in digital filters will separate channels on multiplex equipment. Integrated circuits will also switch telephone circuits and perform data processing.
He more or less nailed it, even the idea of computers being consumer items. He did miss a few fine points, for example, with regard to capacitors and inductors. Ken Shirriff's computer history reverse engineering blog is full of integrated circuits containing surprisingly large capacitors, often for voltage shifts but for other functions as well. Moore also missed the broad range of analog circuitry that moved to integrated circuits, especially if you consider the various solid state power applications e.g. DC to AC converters for electric car motors as integrated circuits. Less seriously, he didn't extrapolate to realize that integrated circuits would get fast enough to do software radio replacing capacitors and inductors with algorithms.
it's an interesting exercise to look back fifty or sixty years at a technology. It was January, 1965, that Nirenberg published the first draft of the genetic code mapping DNA/RNA to amino acids. Our ability to read and manipulate using the genetic code was at the heart of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines developed last year. Seminal work on osmotic membranes was published in April 1965, and such membranes are used in desalinization and in lithium ion batteries. Although the idea of fiber optics for information transfer was first proposed in 1963, the first patent was in 1965. The laser celebrated its fifth birthday that same year.
It's much harder to look forward fifty or sixty years as Moore did. The golden age of materials science is just ramping up. All that ecological "stamp collecting" is being theorized and formalized. The materials, chemical, biological triptych popularized by such as Mary Somerville is merging into a collage. It's a pity I don't have another 50 or 60 years to see where things are going.
He more or less nailed it, even the idea of computers being consumer items. He did miss a few fine points, for example, with regard to capacitors and inductors. Ken Shirriff's computer history reverse engineering blog is full of integrated circuits containing surprisingly large capacitors, often for voltage shifts but for other functions as well. Moore also missed the broad range of analog circuitry that moved to integrated circuits, especially if you consider the various solid state power applications e.g. DC to AC converters for electric car motors as integrated circuits. Less seriously, he didn't extrapolate to realize that integrated circuits would get fast enough to do software radio replacing capacitors and inductors with algorithms.
it's an interesting exercise to look back fifty or sixty years at a technology. It was January, 1965, that Nirenberg published the first draft of the genetic code mapping DNA/RNA to amino acids. Our ability to read and manipulate using the genetic code was at the heart of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines developed last year. Seminal work on osmotic membranes was published in April 1965, and such membranes are used in desalinization and in lithium ion batteries. Although the idea of fiber optics for information transfer was first proposed in 1963, the first patent was in 1965. The laser celebrated its fifth birthday that same year.
It's much harder to look forward fifty or sixty years as Moore did. The golden age of materials science is just ramping up. All that ecological "stamp collecting" is being theorized and formalized. The materials, chemical, biological triptych popularized by such as Mary Somerville is merging into a collage. It's a pity I don't have another 50 or 60 years to see where things are going.