Magnetic Core Memory, 2N1613 Transistor, Plus 4 Inch Silicon Wafer Of CPU Chips

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This sale is for the set of one vintage 4096 bit magnetic core plane, one 1962 Fairchild 2N1613 transistor, and one wafer of vintage 1980s Rockwell International CPU chips as shown in the photo. All are in excellent collectible condition.<br>A stunning visual illustration of technological advancement over just a few short years. Magnetic core memories went obsolete in such a short period of time that today they have become rare and collectible. Just looking at these objects side by side demonstrates clearly why this happened.<br>The 64x64 (4.096 bit) magnetic core plane is a hand wired masterpiece, built<br>by manually threading wires through thousands of tiny ferrite doughnuts. As you can imagine this was a very tedious and costly process. Eventually mechanization advanced to the point where machines could weave the cores, however mounting these and completing assembly was still a very complex and expensive task.<br>The 2N1613 transistor was the first planar device ever produced. Jean Hoerni at Fairchild corporation developed the planar process in 1959 and the 2N1613 went commercial in 1960.<br>Fairchild's<br>planar process had launched the integrated circuit manufacturing revolution.<br>By 1970 entire memory circuits were being built on a single tiny piece of polished silicon. T<br>he old magnetic memory was doomed as silicon memories quickly overtook them.<br>The four inch silicon wafer included contains over one hundred CPU chips fabricated using planar process technology. Each memory block in every CPU chip has more memory than the entire magnetic core plane. Although these  chips have a tiny memory capacity by today's standards, they have features large enough to be seen through an inexpensive classroom microscope. The rectangular memory blocks of the processor chips can be seen with the naked eye. Modern chips are so dense that they have almost no recognizable features even under very high magnification.<br>The magnetic core memory that so much money and effort had gone to, became extinct virtually overnight. The incredible shrinking transistor continues to shrink today, making our cellphones more powerful than supercomputers once were.<br>Photos were taken under standard room lights and<br>are not color enhanced. Silicon wafer colors are caused by diffraction of light and will change dramatically depending on viewing angle and lighting conditions.<br>See many other rare and beautiful tech collectibles in my ebay store.<br>Thanks for looking!<br>