Protection of data processing equipment against static electricity discharges

The fact that electric charges can be produced by friction has been known for several thousandyears, and for most of that time people have been aware of the danger of fires being caused by sparks generated in this way. During the last decade the combination of synthetic fabrics and the dryatmospheres produced by central heating has made discharges of this sort common, and the fast logic circuits used in modem data-processing equipment have often proved susceptible to interference