You and I and every other person on earth are in debt to armies of tiny electronic servants that make the unparalleled quality of our modern life possible.

In 2009 each of us, no matter where we lived or who we were, had more than 10 billion transistors at our beck and call to help place phone calls, record and play video, reproduce music, conduct international business, even do astrophysical calculations. That is not a worldwide total – it is 10 billion per person. In 2003 there were – I hesitate to say “only” – 100 million per person.

That is astonishing growth, and the end is nowhere in sight. Today the transistor is the core processing unit in electronics. Practically every electronic product now in use is enabled by it.

It has evolved from a discrete device – normally packaged in a steel or plastic canister a little larger than a match head, equipped with three wires for connection into an electronic circuit – into an invisibly small component embedded in a self-contained integrated circuit (IC).