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To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-Up Companies, and the Rise of MOS Technology. By Ross Knox Bassett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. XII + 421 pp. Index, notes, bibliography, figures. Cloth, $44.95. ISBN 0-801-86809-2.
Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistors are the technical hearts of today's computer chips. They are the building blocks of the microprocessors that make modern computers possible, regulate the use of gasoline in our cars, and make most home appliances work. Ross Knox Bassett has written a history of how that technology came into being and stimulated the creation of a group of "high-tech" American firms. In the process, he provides a case study of how complex products are developed in a modern commercial setting. The earliest transistors were created in the 1940s; MOS transistors came into their own in the 1960s. Basset takes their history to 1975 but appends a chapter that briefly surveys their evolution to the present.
On the one hand, this is a chronicle of a technology; on the other, it is a history of several firms that developed and manufactured computer technology. As technical history, it is a clear, precise discussion of the decades of...