Dubya had a lunch party today at the White House. Guests were his Pa, President-elect Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Apparently it was Obama’s idea. It was the first time since 1981 that all living presidents have been together at the White House.
Photo here.
Technology Review has an interesting photographic record of Moore’s Law. It opens with this image (from Texas Instruments).
The first working integrated circuit on germanium was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958. This prototype has a transistor (small left dot) attached to two gold wires and a capacitor (middle black dot). The germanium itself, secured on a glass slide, is divided into three resistors by the tabs at the bottom. By showing that all three types of components could work in the same slice of germanium, Kilby offered a way to improve the performance and lower the cost of electronic devices.