Editing Very-large-scale integration (section)

=== Background ===
The [[history of the transistor]] dates to the 1920s when several inventors attempted devices that were intended to control current in solid-state diodes and convert them into triodes.  Success came after World War II, when the use of silicon and germanium crystals as radar detectors led to improvements in fabrication and theory.  Scientists who had worked on radar returned to solid-state device development.  With the invention of the first [[transistor]] at [[Bell Labs]] in 1947, the field of electronics shifted from vacuum tubes to [[solid-state device]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Zorpette |first=Glenn |date=20 November 2022 |title=How the First Transistor Worked |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-history |journal=IEEE Spectrum}}</ref>

With the small transistor at their hands, electrical engineers of the 1950s saw the possibilities of constructing far more advanced circuits.  However, as the complexity of circuits grew, problems arose.<ref name="The History of the Integrated Circuit" /> One problem was the size of the circuit. A complex circuit like a computer was dependent on speed.  If the components were large, the wires interconnecting them must be long.  The electric signals took time to go through the circuit, thus slowing the computer.<ref name="The History of the Integrated Circuit">{{Cite web |title=The History of the Integrated Circuit |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/integrated_circuit/history/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629102838/https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/integrated_circuit/history/ |archive-date=29 Jun 2018 |access-date=21 Apr 2012 |publisher=Nobelprize.org}}</ref>

The [[invention of the integrated circuit]] by [[Jack Kilby]] and [[Robert Noyce]] solved this problem by making all the components and the chip out of the same block (monolith) of semiconductor material.<ref>{{Cite web |title=BBC - History - Historic Figures: Kilby and Noyce (1923-2005) |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/kilby_and_noyce.shtml |access-date=2024-08-10 |website=www.bbc.co.uk |language=en-GB}}</ref>  The circuits could be made smaller, and the manufacturing process could be automated.  This led to the idea of integrating all components on a single-crystal silicon wafer, which led to small-scale integration (SSI) in the early 1960s, and then medium-scale integration (MSI) in the late 1960s.<ref>{{Citation |last=O’Regan |first=Gerard |title=The Invention of the Integrated Circuit and the Birth of Silicon Valley |date=2016 |work=Introduction to the History of Computing: A Computing History Primer |pages=93–100 |editor-last=O'Regan |editor-first=Gerard |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_7 |access-date=2024-08-10 |series=Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science |place=Cham |publisher=Springer International Publishing |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_7 |isbn=978-3-319-33138-6|url-access=subscription }}</ref>