Manufacturing takes place in very large facilities. If you want to build a computer chip, you need a giant semiconductor fabrication facility. But nature can grow complex molecular machines using nothing more than a plant.
I still love the semiconductor industry.
The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.
For me, the ability to use semiconductor sequencing to provide a medical diagnosis in just a few hours that once took days is a crucial step in saving the lives of patients. This is particularly significant for the treatment of sepsis, where every minute matters.
The electronics industry expanded rapidly and the seeds for the semiconductor and software revolution were planted. The postwar period also saw the suburbanization of America, the rise of the homeowner, the build-out of the interstate highway system, and the rise of automobile culture. Credit availability expanded dramatically.
Well, I think first of all, probably the most fundamental thing is that we are a mixed-signal analog semiconductor company, which, along with some of the other well-known names in the industry, enjoys very good economics.
In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.
It was at Bell Labs that I first made direct contact with real semiconductor experts and thus began to fully understand what amazing materials they were and what they could do.
In the late 1960s, red and the low green LEDs and the infrared semiconductor lasers had already been developed, but there was no prospect of practical blue light emitters, even in the '70s.
My project was radiation damage of Si and Ge by energetic electrons, critical for the use of the recently developed semiconductor devices for applications in outer space.