This is the scale at which we encounter one of the greatest technological triumphs of the twentieth century: the silicon chip. These chips are tiny collections of silicon crystals and electronic conductors, and they are the basic engine of the electronic world. There are billions of them inside the many electronic machines that surround us—they play our music, they take our holiday photos, and they wash our clothes. They are the man-made equivalent of the neurons in our brains and exist at the same scale as the nucleus within our cells. Strangely enough they contain no moving parts, using only
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