Editorial July 14, 1980 Issue

More Spirit, less matter

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

"Perhaps the biggest advantage of optical communications. .. is that a single glass fiber five one-thousandths of an inch thick can carry. .. 672 one-way telephone conversations. ... A copper telephone cable three inches in diameter, containing 1,800 individual wires, can carry only 900 conversations."

The New York Times, January 28, 1979.

"Silicon: refined to unimaginable purity, drawn up into massive perfect crystals and sliced finer than the thinnest wafer, tinier than a baby's fingernail. Silicon: then scribed with a minute, complex road-map to create a multileveled sub-microscopic city, with by-ways the width of light-waves, through which electrons will rush, performing intricate tasks of logic and timing and computation. And finally, this silicon metropolis is sealed into a black plastic case the size of a postage stamp.

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