Electronics comes of age

JUST 50 years ago, in the year 1897, Professor J. J. Thomson made the pronouncement, based on clear-cut experimental evidence, of the separate existence of elementary negatively charged particles — electrons. It was in the same year that Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in radio transmission across the Bristol Channel, a distance of nine miles. These events, in a tangible way, highlighted the foundations on which electronics was to be erected: namely, the elementary particles upon which it is based and the external forces or fields produced by these particles in motion. The phenomenal developments in electronics in the intervening years mark the emergence of the science and the associated nation-wide industry of electronics with all the privileges and responsibilities which go with maturity, privileges and responsibilities which have been acquired with growth and expansion