Obituary | A world built on sand

Gordon Moore’s law was the spur that drove the digital revolution

The physical chemist who co-founded Intel died on March 24th, aged 94

Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore holds up a silicon wafer at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., Wednesday, March 9, 2005. This is the 40th anniversary of "Moore's Law". Moore saw that the number of components on an integrated circuit had doubled every year and figured that rate would continue for a decade as transistors were made smaller. He saw that the per-component costs would fall as manufacturing improved. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) — Image: AP

Mar 30th 2023

Medieval philosophers once wondered how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Gordon Moore, who with his liking for pad, pencil and a quiet, solitary desk often looked philosophical, wondered how many transistors could be etched on one silicon wafer to make an integrated circuit. The first transistors he had ever encountered, in 1954 at a lecture by the man who had co-invented them, William Shockley, were as big as peanuts. But they were shrinking fast. The more you could pack together, the more these tiny marvels could do, until they could probably change the world.

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Chips in everything”