he National Medical Library retrieval system, and in the Chemical Abstracts System, where computer records on file now cover nearly all known chemical compounds. The trend during the 1970's was, to some extent, moving away from very powerful, single-purpose computers towards computers with a larger range of applications, and for cheaper computer systems. Most continuous-process manufacturing, such as petroleum refining and electrical-power distribution systems, now used smaller computers for controlling and regulating their jobs. In the 1960's, the problems in programming applications were an obstacle to the independence of medium sized on-site computers, but gains in applications programming language technologies removed these obstacles. Applications languages were now available for controlling a great range of manufacturing processes, and for using machine tools with computers. Moreover, a new revolution in computer hardware was under way, including the shrinking of computer-logic circuitry components by what are called large-scale integration (LSI) techniques. In the 1950s it was realized that "scaling down" the size of electronic digital computer circuits and parts would increase speed and efficiency and by that, improve performance, if they could only find a way to do this. About 1960 photo printing of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring became more developed. Then it became possible to build resistors and capacitors into the circuitry by the same process. In the 1970's, vacuum deposition of transistors became the norm, and entire assemblies, with adders, shifting registers, and counters, became available on tiny "chips." In the 1980's, very large scale integration (VLSI), in which hundreds of thousands of transistors were placed on a single chip, became more and more common. Many companies introduced programmable minicomputers supplied with software packages. The "shrinking" trend continued wit...
