[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
For what it's worth, I recently read a fascinating book that described the history of "the chip". How it came into being. Based on what I read much of what Mr. Carrell has had to say on this subject appears to be pretty accurate.
Believe me, he got it wrong. I have not read the book by T. R. Reid (a Washington Post reporter) but I have read many books by engineers and technologists, and I am sure that by 1971 integrated circuits were a gigantic industry. Heck, I have computer textbooks and manuals from that era right here on my shelf, which describe the IC industry and its importance. I have a Hitachi IC from that era mounted in a tie clip. (I also have one of the last magnetic core memory units, which hangs on my wall.)
Washington Post reporter and columnist T.R. Reid (Confucius Lives Next Door) investigates these underappreciated heroes of the technological age and the global repercussions of their invention.
They were not underappreciated! Anyone familiar with the history of technology would recognize the names instantly. Furthermore, others who made large contributions such as Robert Noyce were also recognized, and rewarded with several orders of magnitude more money than you get with a Nobel prize.
The enormity of their accomplishment was fully recognized only in 2000, when Kilby won the Nobel Prize. 3-city author tour.
That's ridiculous. They got every honor known to engineering long before 2000. The Nobel award to him was an anomaly. Kilby was probably the first engineer in history to get it, and the last. The Nobel was never intended to be a prize for applied technology. It is for academic science. The people who invented the transistor got Nobels very quickly because they were physicists and chemists.
There is no Nobel for engineering, and none for mathematics, supposedly because Mrs. Nobel had an affair with a mathematician.
- Jed
