Only a semiconductor revolution can save the flagging British automobile industry Clive Hickman In 1974, a failing New Mexico calculator maker took a gamble. Laden with debt after a brutal price war and a botched IPO, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems decided to enter the microcomputer market. Its offering was the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer that would spark the microcomputer revolution. Inside each device [...]
The UK has conceptualised 21st century tech – now it’s time for us to make it, too Few people would argue that the lithium ion batteries which power our smartphones, or the flat-screen televisions sitting in millions of living rooms across the world, were not game-changing scientific innovations. Fewer still would be aware that the research and conceptualisation behind these innovations was conducted here in the UK. So too, in fact, was [...]