Innovation, Independence & Precision Electronics

Welcome to the 25th Post of TAXING TARIFFS on this 250th Anniversary of the establishment of the United States of America! In July of 1776 several highly significant events happened asserting that Thirteen Colonies were independent of Great Britain.

On July 2, the Second Continental Congress passed the Lee resolution. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, and on July 8 it was publicly read for the first time – prompted by the ringing of the Liberty Bell. In honor of the Declaration we’ll take an historical view of innovation up until the time that the transistor was successfully demonstrated and then we’ll refocus our point of view to modern inventions.

In 1776 tariffs and excise taxes were the main form of revenue for the newly formed United States though the word tariff did not appear until later, they were referred to as import duties until 1789. Income and corporate taxes didn’t exist yet. At that time in our nation’s history tariffs were viewed as either for the sake of revenue, as was certainly the case in wartime, or to help establish particular manufacturing industries. Alexander Hamilton was a proponent of the latter. He first published “The Report on the Subject of Manufactures” in 1791 when he also presented it to the U.S. House of Representatives in his capacity as the first Secretary of the Treasury. The Tariff of 1789 was designed to raise revenue, protect domestic emerging manufacturing industries, and most importantly to counter British trade restrictions. Britain had been imposing trade restrictions and taxes on imported goods since the 1600s and this brought some measure of pain to the colonies. American colonies were growing more and more concerned when the Indemnity Acts and Townshend Acts of 1767 were imposed by Britain.

Tariffs, whether known by that name at the time, or not, were a major part of the Colonies split with the King “across the pond.” These two successive Acts by British parliament led directly to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. During the time that the Declaration of Independence was signed, innovations were already taking place across agricultural and manufacturing industries. George Washington was developing scientific based farming techniques emphasizing soil health and crop rotations. Thomas Jefferson was developing a wooden moldboard plow at Monticello. This would later be refined by John Deere in the 1830s. Tobacco, Rice, and Indigo plantations were thriving in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Shipbuilding was a growing industry in New England where timber was abundant and the Atlantic Ocean next door. Massachusetts and Rhode Island were producing vessels for domestic trade and for the British as well. Improvements were being made to prepare ships for the new United States Navy. Hulls were reinforced, rigging improved, and armaments were rearranged. Ironworks were emerging in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fur trade and lumbering were going on in the Great Lakes region. The colonists were already innovating with fervor when the Declaration was signed.

Over the next 160 years after the Declaration innovation continued apace. The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, it transformed the U.S. cotton industry, shaped the South’s antebellum economy, and significantly reduced disease due to increased availability of cotton undergarments. Robert Fulton’s steamboat (1809) revolutionized inland water transport. Telegraph and Morse code (1837-1838) was brought about by Samuel Morse; the telegraph system that existed in the North was a significant factor in the outcome of the Civil War. Charles Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber process made rubber durable and versatile enough to make tires and hoses. Typewriter (1839), refrigeration (1834), reaper (1831), bicycle (1869), electric lights (1809), stethoscope (1816), matches (1826), the propeller (1836), and the list goes on. Then there is perhaps the greatest invention of all – the U.S. Patent System as implemented by the U.S. Patent Act of 1790: the invention that protects all our inventions.

Now let’s jump forward to 1925 when Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed a field-effect transistor based on his groundbreaking theoretical work. This patent was filed in Canada, but, at the time, there was no practical way to build one. Then on December 23, 1947 in Murray Hill, New Jersey at Bell Laboratories, the scientist/inventors John Bardeen, Walter Brittain, and William Shockley demonstrated the first working transistor.

After that group at Bell Labs started the foundations of the digital age another electronic device was developed by two men at two different companies. Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor independently developed the Integrated Circuit or IC for short. In this way, many transistors could be fabricated on a single chip package. The 1970s and 80s brought forth the microprocessor in the form of an Intel 4004 which integrated a Central Processing Unit, or CPU, onto a single chip. Also in those two decades, Apple built and sold the Apple II and IBM created a PC.

Once Apple’s products, that came to be known as Macs, and PCs proliferated the trajectory of electronics became “parabolic.” The military’s ARPANET became the Internet. Mobile phones (heavy-not so smart-ones) came on the scene and smarter devices like PDAs, game consoles, and digital cameras were brought to the public. In 2007 smartphones began to inhabit the personal spaces of an ever-expanding portion of the human population. WiFi, Bluetooth, and Social Media followed soon thereafter. Now we have Artificial Intelligence (AI) which promises to be the follow on act to the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. AI is after all electronics on programmer steroids. Nvidia is a Santa Clara, CA based company and is currently the premier designer of AI chips in the world. As the miniaturization of electronic components continues to press the limits of technology – electronics are being embedded throughout the folds of society and becoming ever finer to the point ubiquity.

Micron Corporation would like to wish all of you a joyous, grateful, and safe 4 th of July celebration for the founding of this great innovative nation of ours. (And a shout out to the USA Soccer Team. USA! USA! USA!)

After the holiday come join us for PRECISION ELECTRONICS AT A MICRON LEVEL where you’ll find an ever-expanding body of knowledge about how Micron Corporation has been serving customers since before the Internet. If you have any questions about our process or just want to talk about the state-of-the-art of electronics manufacturing, you can always reach us at taxingtariffs@microncorp.com.