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A very significant time

The Coronation of Elizabeth II took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey in London. She acceded to the throne at the age of 25 upon the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952.

Although the very first transistor was created in the lab towards the end of 1947, production didn't start until 1951 and the first application to hit the masses, the transistor radio, was demonstrated in August 1953.

Cradled somewhere amongst those very significant dates the Irish Dodo was born,. He has seen the Queen continue her duties into her 95th year as the longest serving British monarch, and seen 50 years of Moore's law obeyed (that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit aka silicon chip should double every two year) so that last year 2.6 trillion transistors were integrated into a single integrated circuit to create a deep learning engine called the Wafer Scale Engine 2.

Back then such advances could not be countenanced. Check out this video The Transistor: a 1953 documentary, anticipating its coming impact on technology with the possibility that, using transistors, a computer might then be small enough to fit into an average room. Little did they know.


What marvels will my grandchildren see and enjoy?  Assuming things continue as they have these last 60 or so years. Things that we cannot even now imagine? A tower of Babel?


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