For electronics, the past is prologue

The occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Northeast Electronics Research and Engineering Meeting provided an opportunity to review the progress of the electronics industry during NEREM's 25-year history. Those years produced the transistor and the integrated circuit, electronic data processing, and the ultrareliable systems of electronic telemetry, computation, control, and communication that guided man to the moon and back. A study of certain developments during this period suggests a bright future for electronics.