The transistor was invented on December 16, 1947, by John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain. Bardeen and Brattain developed the first transistor on that date, of which Shockley was a part of the team.
About a month later on January 23, 1948, Shockley invented another strain of a transistor, which became the transistor of choice based upon the fact it was easier to manufacture.
Now that it's sixty years since it's been developed, some are starting to seriously wonder how much longer it can follow Moore's law, which says the number of transistors on a chip could double every two years.
That was based on assertions by one of the founders of Intel (INTC), Gordon Moore.
Now Moore is among those that figure the reality of that law will be challenged in the future, saying it will be difficult to continue at that pace beyond the next 10 years.
Of course this is nothing new, as naysayers have been saying for years that Moore's Law is going to come to an end, and have been wrong on that count.
Moore says today: "I can see (it lasting) another decade or so," he said of the axiom now known as Moore's Law. "Beyond that, things look tough. But that's been the case many times in the past."
Intel, the leading semiconductor company in the world, believes that what are considered unknown and speculative technologies today - like optical switches and quantum computing - will have to come to the front in order for Moore's Law to operate beyond about 2020.
What's exciting about this to me, isn't how long Moore's Law lasts, or if it goes on indefinitely, but rather that companies are starting to focus on ways to make transistors behave in a variety of new and powerful ways. That could be the greatest benefit of concerns about Moore's Law, than whether it stops operating at the projected speed that it has since 1965 (when Gordon Moore made the prediction).
Who knows what extraordinary things can emerge out of expanding what the transistors can do, and how it can be applied to business and marketing?
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