Photograph of chips representing the increase in bipolar integrated circuit complexity

In 1968 Gordon Moore, Director of R & D at the Fairchild Semiconductor Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, CA, asked Harry Sello to photograph a selection of devices that illustrated his observation of the increasing number of components - Transistors (Tx) + Resistors (R) - that were being fabricated on a silicon chip every year that later became known as Moore’s “Law.” This artifact is an electronic image of that photograph. The device type and approximate component count for each is as follows: Upper Row (L to R): 2N697 planar transistor (1960) - 1 component (1 Tx); Micrologic Type G 3-input RTL Gate (1962) - 7 components (3 Tx + 4 R); Micrologic Type R RTL Half-Shift Register (late 1962) - 20 components (8 Tx + 12R): 945 DTL R-S flip-flop (early 1964) – 33 components (13 Tx + 21R) Lower Row (L to R): 958 Micrologic RTL Decade Counter (late 1964) – 58 components (33 Tx + 25R); 9300 TTL Universal shift register (1966) – 125 components (85 Tx + 40R); 4500 Micromatrix 32-gate DTL array (1967) – 264 components (200 Tx + 64R)