The first consumer devices to use microchips were hearing aids because they needed to be very small and would sell even if they were rather expensive. But the demand for them was limited. So Pat Haggerty, the president of Texas Instruments, repeated a gambit that had served him in the past. One aspect of innovation is inventing new devices; another is inventing popular ways to use these devices. Haggerty and his company were good at both. Eleven years after he had created a huge market for inexpensive transistors by pushing pocket radios, he looked for a way to do the same for microchips. The
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