For, by combining enough of these switches, each one a tiny, physical manifestation of the binary code, zero or one, you could create a computer on a tiny piece of silicon, chipped off a circular wafer (hence “chips”). These leaps of innovation, from the switch itself to the “integrated circuit,” the first of which was etched on to silicon by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, represented the physical foundation of the computing age.
