History

The binary number system was refined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (published in 1705), and he also established that by using the binary system, the principles of arithmetic and logic could be joined. Digital logic as we know it was the invention of George Boole in the mid-19th century. In an 1886 letter, Charles Sanders Peirce described how logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits.Eventually, vacuum tubes replaced relays for logic operations. Lee De Forest's modification of the Fleming valve in 1907 could be used as an AND gate. Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced a version of the 16-row truth table as proposition 5.101 of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). Walther Bothe, inventor of the coincidence circuit, shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in physics for creating the first modern electronic AND gate in 1924.

Mechanical analog computers started appearing in the first century and were later used in the medieval era for astronomical calculations. In World War II, mechanical analog computers were used for specialized military applications such as calculating torpedo aiming. During this time the first electronic digital computers were developed, with the term digital being proposed by George Stibitz in 1942. Originally, they were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern PCs.

Claude Shannon, demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship, ultimately laid the foundations of digital computing and digital circuits in his master's thesis of 1937, which is considered to be arguably the most important master's thesis ever written, winning the 1939 Alfred Noble Prize.

The Z3 was an electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse. Finished in 1941, it was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer.Its operation was facilitated by the invention of the vacuum tube in 1904 by John Ambrose Fleming.

At the same time that digital calculation replaced analog, purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invented the point-contact transistor at Bell Labs in 1947, followed by William Shockley inventing the bipolar junction transistor at Bell Labs in 1948.

At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of vacuum tubes.Their "transistorised computer", and the first in the world, was operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955. From 1955 and onwards, transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors were smaller, more reliable, had indefinite lifespans, and required less power than vacuum tubes - thereby giving off less heat and allowing much denser concentrations of circuits, up to tens of thousands in a relatively compact space.

In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick discovered silicon dioxide surface passivation effects.In 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors; the first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface.At Bell Labs, the importance of the Frosch and Derick technique and transistors was immediately realized. Results of their work circulated around Bell Labs in the form of BTL memos before being published in 1957. At Shockley Semiconductor, Shockley had circulated the preprint of their article in December 1956 to all his senior staff, including Jean Hoerni, who would later invent the planar process in 1959 while at Fairchild Semiconductor.At Bell Labs, J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/SiO2 stack and published their results in 1960. Following this research at Bell Labs, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng proposed a silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960.The team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device.

While working at Texas Instruments in July 1958, Jack Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit (IC), then successfully demonstrated the first working integrated circuit on 12 September 1958.Kilby's chip was made of germanium. The following year, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor invented the silicon integrated circuit. The basis for Noyce's silicon IC was Hoerni's planar process.

The MOSFET's advantages include high scalability,affordability,low power consumption, and high transistor density.Its rapid on–off electronic switching speed also makes it ideal for generating pulse trains,the basis for electronic digital signals,in contrast to BJTs which, more slowly, generate analog signals resembling sine waves.Along with MOS large-scale integration (LSI), these factors make the MOSFET an important switching device for digital circuits.The MOSFET revolutionized the electronics industry, and is the most common semiconductor device.

In the early days of integrated circuits, each chip was limited to only a few transistors, and the low degree of integration meant the design process was relatively simple. Manufacturing yields were also quite low by today's standards. The wide adoption of the MOSFET transistor by the early 1970s led to the first large-scale integration (LSI) chips with more than 10,000 transistors on a single chip. Following the wide adoption of CMOS, a type of MOSFET logic, by the 1980s, millions and then billions of MOSFETs could be placed on one chip as the technology progressed, and good designs required thorough planning, giving rise to new design methods. The transistor count of devices and total production rose to unprecedented heights. The total amount of transistors produced until 2018 has been estimated to be 1.3×1022 (13 sextillion).

The wireless revolution (the introduction and proliferation of wireless networks) began in the 1990s and was enabled by the wide adoption of MOSFET-based RF power amplifiers (power MOSFET and LDMOS) and RF circuits (RF CMOS).Wireless networks allowed for public digital transmission without the need for cables, leading to digital television, satellite and digital radio, GPS, wireless Internet and mobile phones through the 1990s–2000s.