Chips

During the mid-20th century home phones became popular with 70% of homes having a phone by 1950. At that time Bell had a regulated monopoly until 1984 when it was broken up in to smaller companies. Ma Bell became the baby Bells. Part of the agreement with the government is that Bell would share technology. In 1947 Bell invented the transiter and later how to place the transiter on a chip. This allowed connections between transiters without using wires. The first chips were memory chips and each purpose needed a special chip. Later chips were programmable and one chip could be used for many purposes. In time US companies like Apple began to design their chips and manufacture them in Tiawan. The early chips were used primarily by the military but today 99% of chips are used in private industry. Countries around the world, led by the Soviet Union, used espionage to steal research and thus never became adept at their own research. Even today the research is done by American companies. China’s entire chip industry is founded on intellectual theft. Because of the way the chip industry evolved the supply chain is world wide and this leads to possible problems with national defense. The current trend is to bring home manufacturing to the US and this includes the chip business. American companies like Apple are now producing chips in America and this will expand over time until the supply chain is all America.