The first practical transistors—solid-state devices performing the same functions as glass-enclosed devices—became commercially available during the early 1950s, and before the decade’s end the ideas of several American inventors (Robert Noyce, Jack Kilby, Jean Hoerni, Kurt Lehovec, and Mohamed Atalla) resulted in the production of the first integrated circuits, with active (transistors) and passive (capacitors, resistors) components built and interconnected on a thin layer of silicon (a semiconducting material). These circuits can perform any specified computing functions, and their first
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