Microchip by Jeffrey Zygmont, Perseus, $25, ISBN 0738205613 Reviewed by Wendy G. Grossman
THE microchip, heart of every device from mobile phones to cars, merits its own biography. We may think computers changed the world, but Jeffrey Zygmont is right when he says that the all-pervasive microchip has made the real difference.
Early development, was as you’d expect, marred by disagreements and false starts, and like any Silicon Valley story was nursed along by mavericks, even in already large companies such as Texas Instruments.
Advertisement
However incredible we may now find it, engineers did not instantly welcome the idea of a general-purpose microchip. Many thought there would never be sufficient volume to pay back the development costs. The first prototype portable calculator – codenamed Cal Tech – needed $60,000 worth of integrated circuits at prevailing prices. Three years later, prices had dropped and technology improved so much that the first portable calculators could retail for as little as $350 (and now as little as $5).
Zygmont believes a key factor in popularising microprocessors was Robert Noyce’s decision (while at Fairchild Semiconductor) to cut prices below cost to attract customers other than the military. The theory that cutting prices to gain market share will ultimately result in economies of scale and increased profits has dominated the industry (to say nothing of the dot-com bubble) ever since. Zygmont quotes Gordon Moore (of Moore’s Law) as saying that the progress we’ve seen would never have happened otherwise.
Somehow Microchip never quite captures the excitement of a revolution or of other books attempting this type of contemporary history. You are never down in the trenches alongside the designers nor up in the boardroom witnessing the life and death of businesses disrupted by new technologies. The microchip still awaits its definitive biographer.