The Microchip is Old

Katherine Mangu-Ward | September 12, 2008

Feast your eyes on this ugly monster: the first integrated circuit. Then check out Wired's slide show on the history of the microchip in honor of its 50th anniversary, which is today. We've come a long way baby:

While that device started out as nothing more than a single transistor with a smattering of other components on a thin slice of germanium, its silicon progeny now contain hundreds of transistors in a space the size of a single red blood cell.