Milestones in electronics

Year Event
1895 Marconi first radio transmission
1904 Fleming Valve (Diode Vacuum Tube)
1906 De Forest – Triode vacuum tube (Audion) – Age of
electronics begins
1925 TV demonstrated
1925 Lilienfeld files patent application on the field-effect device

1940 Radar developed during World War II

1947 Bipolar transistors invented by Bardeen, Brattain &
Shockley at Bell Laboratories
1952 Commercial production of silicon bipolar transistors at
Texas Instruments
Electronics
 1956 Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley receive Nobel Prize for
invention of bipolar transistors
1958 Simultaneous development of the integrated circuit by
Kilby (2000 Nobel Prize) at Texas Instruments & Noyce
and Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor
1961 First commercial digital IC available from Fairchild
Semiconductor
1967 First Semiconductor RAM (64bits) discussed at the IEEE
International Solid-Sate Circuits Conference (ISSCC)

1968 Introduction of the first commercial IC operational

amplifier – the µA – 709 – by Fairchild Semiconductor
1971 Introduction of the 4004 microprocessor by Intel
1978 First 16–bit microprocessor

Electronics
 1906 Lee de Forest developed the
triode vacuum tube (Audion)
Age of electronics begins.

Audion photograph (right) and

schematics (up)
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 MOSFET patent

Electronics
 Bipolar transistor invented
by Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley
at Bell Laboratories in 1947.

Electronics
 Point contact transistor
1947

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 Microwatt bipolar
junction transistor
1951

Electronics
 First planar BJT transistor (Fairchild 1959)

Electronics
 First integrated circuit (TI, 1958)

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 Schematics of the first IC

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 1962: Resistor-
transistor logic (TTL)
First IC with wide
acceptance in the
commercial market

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 9
Moore´s law governs 10
the silicon revolution Microprocessor
10
8 Memory

16M
7
10

Transistor per die

4M
Pentium

DEC Alpha
1M 80486
6 68040
10 80860
250K
68030
80386
64K 68020
5 Bellmac 80286
10 32A

68000
16K
8086
4K
4 8048
10
8085
1K 8080
8008 Source: Intel Corp.
4004
3
10
1970 1980 1990 2000

Level of integration vs. Time, for memory chips and logic chips.
Electronics
 From integrated circuits to integrated systems

Ref.: J. M. Younse, “Mirrors on a chip”, Spectrum IEEE, vol. 30, no. II, pp. 27-
Electronics 31, Nov. 1993.
 International technology roadmap
for semiconductors (1999)

Year 2002 2005 2008 2011 2014 2017 2020 2023 2026
130 100 70 50 35 25 18 13 10
Technology nm nm nm nm nm nm nm nm nm

Gate Oxide 1.5-1.9 1.0-1.5 0.8-1.2 0.6-0.8 0.5-0.6

Solution Being
Ion Pursued No Known Solution

Electronics
 References

THE SCIENCE MUSEUM LONDON, EYEWITNESS

SCIENCE: ELECTRONICS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 76, NO. 10, OCTOBER
1988
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 86, NO. 1, JANUARY
1998
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 88, NO. 5, MAY 2000
RICHARD C. JAEGER, MICROELECTRONICS CIRCUITS
DESIGN, Mc GRAW HILL 1997

Electronics