Integrated electronics—A perspective

Integrated electronics promises to increase both the rate of change within the electronics industry and the pervasiveness of electronics as a whole, making it possible to remove very fundamental and interrelated limitations to applying the knowledge and tools of electronics, the most harassing of which have been reliability, cost, complexity, and that imposed by the specialized character of and relative sophistication of the science, engineering, and art of electronics. Evaluating the history, current status and the likely future of integrated electronics, it seems now highly probable that this new technology may introduce a terminal phase in which electronics will pervade all segments of our society to which it has pertinence. Basic requirements to ensure this appear to be 1) A relatively concentrated, highly-automated industrial complex to supply integrated circuitry and closely related compatible discrete componentry and 2) Establishment by this integrated-circuits industry of a common language for the input and output parameters which specifies its products, ultimately making it possible for members of other disciplines and professions to utilize, without themselves being electronics specialists, the knowledge, tools, and skills of electronics for the benefit of all of society.