The march of technology

Moore’s Law, named after Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, reflects his 1965 observation that computer transistors, or processors, were shrinking so fast that every year twice as many could fit onto a chip.

These days, we’ve become accustomed to processors becoming smaller, faster and cheaper. The speed of innovation is illustrated by the accompanying page from the Christmas 2004 issue of Better Homes & Gardens. Advertised are Apple iPods with a ‘powerful 4GB package’ for $399, a $499 digital camera with 12 MB of memory, a ‘4th generation’ video camera for $1799 and ‘the world’s first commercially available mobile broadband access card’. You probably have all these things and more packaged up inside your smartphone.