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Computers used to be huge machines that took up an entire room or even floor of a building. This was because they were filled with thousands of vacuum tubes which were about the size of a light bulb. Eventually the tube was replaced by the transistor, which was smaller. Engineers were able to shrink down the transistor more and more over time. By the 1970s, transistors were so small that they could fit thousands of them on a silicon microchip, and this is what allowed the creation of the first "personal computer", which is what gave rise to the computer industry as we know it. The company that created the first silicon microchip was Intel, located in what came to be known as Silicon Valley.

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12y ago

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