vered by engineers during the early 1950’s. Transistors were great! They were smaller, less expensive, more reliable, and had a faster performance rate than the vacuum tubes. In 1959, a physicist at the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation by the name of Robert Noyce invented the integrated circuit. This newly found technology was a major turning point for the computer industry. The integrated circuit was a tiny chip of silicon consisting of a complete electronic circuit. Noyce’s discovery was paramount to the computer industry. It did away with the large, bulky computer systems of the past, and introduced smaller, more compact systems that had much more to offer—increased memory capacities, speeds and capabilities. However, the new designs were very expensive and required extensive maintenance. These computers were usually only found in large computer centers that were operated by either: the government, industry, or private laboratories. The reason for this is that only highly skilled programmers could perform the complex operations that were being run on these computers, and the smaller organizations could not afford to hire the experts needed to keep them running.By 1960, the race was on to see which company could build the fastest computer with the greatest capacity. The challenge soon ended with Sperry-Rand Corporation’s introduction of the LARC machine, and IBM’s completion of the Stretch. The LARC was developed for Livermore Radiation Labs. It consisted of 98,000 word-memory and 10-micro-second multiplication ability. The Stretch on the other hand, boosted 100-million-word memory storage, and its fastest processing time was less than 1-micro-second (Chposky, 147). Between 1963 and 1972, there were many other notable accomplishments in the computer field. The discovery of transistors opened various opportunities for industry Research and Development. The era produced integrated circui...
