From War Crystals to Ordinary Sand: Excavating Silicon Supply Chains

Where did the silicon used in manufacturing the first silicon transistors actually come from? While early marketing materials and media coverage of silicon electronics emphasized silicon as a material “found in ordinary sand” (a framing that persists today), silicon wafer manufacture actually requires silicon dioxide purified to levels rarely found in geological deposits, let alone on a typical beach. This article makes the case that early silicon wafer manufacturing processes most likely utilized high-purity quartz crystal sourced from Brazil. Incorporating mineral procurement into the early history of silicon electronics and computers expands its geographic, labor, and military-industrial context to lay bare the global supply chains that have always been necessary for the manufacture of digital electronics at scale. The media valorization of Brazilian quartz during World War II also offers a counternarrative to the pervasive myth of silicon as merely “ordinary sand.”