The invention of the transistor by Walter Brattain in 1947 at Bell Labs when combined with the invention of the  integrated circuit by Jack Kilby in 1958 gave rise later to an entire revolution based on a single component.

 

A new component has arisen and it appears disruptive. It's good to be on the ground floor with disruptive technologies. Think of tasks that require learning to perform. Think of tasks that require pattern recognition. There are classic problems in { speech and visual } x {recognition and synthesis} that are not solved well with transistors, but may work well with biomimic neural chips.

- after D.R. Newman

It took 30 years for the first revolution to start and 45 to peak, but communication was slower. If we time compress by the improvement in communication and correct for the abundance of people who get most of their information by TV, maybe it still takes 30 years!

 

- Van