Among those involved were Bell Laboratories in the U.S. and physicists William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen. Subsequent work by Swiss physicists, Jean Hoerni and Robert Noyce, led to integrated circuits. Progress was now so rapid that in 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, said computer power would double every 18 months. He was correct. Computers now centre a vast worldwide technology that controls workplaces, banks, services, goods and nations.
Computers can talk to each other and some can be operated by voice command.
Computers fly spacecraft and planes, steer ships, guide missiles and add up groceries at supermarket checkouts. In a mere 30 years, school students have gone from adding up on their fingers to calculators and portable computers. Millions of homes have computers linked with information bases and each other through cable. Users have access to vast information data bases on every subject through the Internet and World Wide Web. The WWW was instigated in 1991 by Swiss scientist Tim Berners-Lu, of the Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva.