One of the biggest innovations to the computer was the integrated circuit (IC) or the chip as it is now known. In fact, the chip has made the computer extremely powerful and affordable so that practically everyone in the world today can own a computer. The chip has had an enormous influence on reducing the cost of the computer, literally cutting it by a factor of a million to one.
The chip was actually invented by two different entities at about the same time without either entity knowing about the other. However, both companies were extremely smart and combined their licensing agreements to take advantage of the huge market for the technology. In the first few decades of computer creation, in order to make a computer more powerful or add innovation, it usually required more and more parts, however with a chip, everything can be placed on an extremely small piece of silicon.
The first commercial integrated circuits or chips were sold in 1961. While first bought up by the military they later were used in the first mobile calculators. While the first chip had one transistor, three resisters and one capacitor which fit on a space less than a square inch, today’s chips are much smaller and can hold more than 125 million transistors.
