Unit 1 Unit 1 Computer and Information (I) 计算机与信息 Passage Hints: 本文章开头前两个单词首字母均大写。 Texas Instruments "Moore's Law" Gordon Moore,
Integrated Circuits In 1959, engineers at Texas Instruments showed that it was possible to incorporate many transistors, connected by metal tracks, onto one piece of silicon. This innovation became known as an integrated circuit, or "silicon chip", and the trend ever since is summarized in "Moore's Law": the number of transistors that can be put on a chip doubles every 12 to 18 months. Gordon Moore, who formulated this law in 1965, later cofounded the chip manufacturer Intel. Integrated circuits soon led to the development of yet smaller, cheaper computers, called minicomputers. Although still too expensive for most individuals to afford, these were relatively simple to operate. Other innovations of the 1960s were keyboards for inputting data into computers and monitors for displaying this data and the results of calculations before they were printed out. In 1971, the floppy disk was introduced for data storage.