Human history can be divided into many distinct ages, including the Modern Age. The Modern Age is hallmarked by three industrial revolutions, the third synonymously known as the Digital Revolution, Information Age or quite simply the third industrial revolution. The origins of the Digital Revolution stem from the advent of the transistor, an electronically controlled switch. The transistor is arguably the most basic and essential component in any digital device. The Transistor was invented in 1948 by William Shockley. It was a bipolar transistor, a configuration that today is non-existent due to the subsequent advent of the MOS (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) transistor. The reason the MOS transistor surmounted the bipolar transistor was due to the fact that it was smaller, easier to build and improve, and generally simpler. The final compelling advantage that would lead to its adoption by Intel was that it was easier to put on integrated circuits, commonly referred to as microchips, it consisted of an arrangement of logic gates, which in turn are specific arrangements of transistors that are representative of functions of Boolean logic, a subarea of algebra in mathematics in which variables are the truth values, true or false, usually denoted as 1 or 0. An example of the better practicality of MOS transistors came in the form of market analysis. Intel, a small Silicon Valley company for which Silicon Valley is named due to silicon being the most prevalent semiconductor in MOS transistors, the most basic component in electronics in an area where miniaturized electronics industry is centered, chose early on in its history to abandon bipolar transistors in favor of MOS transistors for its practicality in integrated circuits. Although the decision at the time was unpopular due to the inefficiency and slow speed of early MOS transistors compared to their bipolar counterpart. IBM, the largest semiconductor manufacturer at the time, unwilling to change its infrastructure, stuck with the bipolar transistor.
