Opening Titles

Machine reading a book to a blind man, speech control of wheelchair: Possible due to silicon chips

Silicon chips making computers 1000 times cheaper via the microprocessor (Electron Microscope view of a working chip), Japan abandons ship building for chips,

From Valve, through the transistor - Japan were quick to setup transistor factories ( then (1947) Shockley, Stanford University, germanium to silicon chips (for defence), to Fairchild and their spin offs to Silicon Valley and Robert Noyce. (1957-1 transistor, 1963-8 transistors, 250.000 (on a chip) in 1978) for the £5 computer - A need for guided missiles

The boom, San Francisco and the early days of Silicon Valley

A computer on a chip - Robert Noyce: Chip Manufacture: Manual entry of layout of the chip to PC for checking, to a mask of 200 per slice, clean rooms, doping via photographic emulsion mask, etching, repeated for each layer (3 days in total per wafer), then tested for .25 s (most failing 25% good ones is a good result!), shipped to be mounted in the Far East (Taiwan), gold wire welding

Comparison of the chip size with human brain size, and replacing nervous tissue with silicon parts (Stanford artificial ear)

Dramatic effects in all products (e.g. calculators now with fierce competition only 2 manufacturers left, & watches), video games, Life will be different

Point of sale terminals for supermarket check-outs, computer driven warehouses, mistakes and speed of working can be checked

Word processing is here, standard paragraphs for the secretary

Networking word processors within the office and perhaps by satellite, mail similarly

Automated manufacturing production line (cars) at Fiat, Italy, USA government robot research, Teaching a robot to spray a chair

Expert Systems (Medical, Jack Myers)

Automatic ploughing, employment drops in traditional industry (Alex G'Agapeyeff British Computer Society (BCS))

Coping with large scale automation - A generation of unemployed? How to share wealth between rich & poor - Union reaction (Mike Cooley- AUEW, TASS / Gordon Paterson - Plessey Ltd)

Currency dealers info system package: Chase Manhattan system from Logica (UK), Software costs, UK very good at programming skills (David Firnberg, Director National Computing Centre), EMI body scanner

EMI body scanner, as an example of new job-creation industries possible due to 'The Chip'

The questions: Intro: The effect on today's jobs: Can we afford not to automate?, meaningful lives, government has stayed ignorant (Mick McLean - Science Policy Research Unit, Robert Clayton - Technical Director GEC, Barrie Sherman - Director of Research ASTMS)

The questions: Is the 2nd industrial revolution coming & how fast?

The questions: The cheap costs of solid state, should we stay out of it? Software costs need to be considered, too

The questions: Are we are miles behind others already, government aware and intervening? Semi-conductor chip manufacture in UK is important.

The questions: Is the government going in the right direction? Short, medium and long term considerations needed; we need a strategy; Plessey & Ferranti are doing OK, effect on employment. Sector working parties

The questions: Is software alone a product for proper national Wealth Creation; USA support by Defence spending, the Japanese have a tremendous coordinated strategy.

The questions: Predictions for the future - will we deal with these problems quick enough

End Titles & Credits