Fairchild cofounder Gordon Moore noticed in 1965 that the number of components that could be fit on each chip was doubling annually as engineers learned to fabricate ever smaller transistors. This prediction—that the computing power of chips would grow exponentially—came to be called “Moore’s Law” and led Moore to predict the invention of devices that in 1965 seemed impossibly futuristic, like an “electronic wristwatch,” “home computers,” and even “personal portable communications equipment.”
