Printed circuit boards were becoming “commonplace” (according to Wikipedia) and the transistor had been invented about 9 years before, so they’d probably be able to figure out at least conceptually what they were looking at. In other words, it’s not as if it would seem like a magical rock etched with runes or something, like it would if you showed it to somebody from 1556.
Therefore, I think they’d get out a microscope and oscilloscope and start trying to reverse-engineer it. Probably speed up the development of computer technology quite a bit, by giving them clues on what direction to go.
Therefore, I think they’d get out a microscope and oscilloscope and start trying to reverse-engineer it. Probably speed up the development of computer technology quite a bit, by giving them clues on what direction to go.
Knowing what something is doesn’t necessarily teach people how it was made. No matter how much you examine a sheet of printed paper, someone with no conception of a laser printer would not be able to derive that much information about how something could have produced such precise, sharp text on a page. They’d be stuck thinking about movable metal type dipped in ink, not lasers burning powdered toner onto a page.
If you took a modern finFET chip from, say, the TSMC 5nm process nodes, and gave it to electrical engineers of 1995, they’d be really impressed with the physical three dimensional structure of the transistors. They could probably envision how computers make it possible to design those chips. But they’d had no conception of how to make EUV at wavelengths necessary to make the photolithography possible at those sizes. No amount of the examination of the chip itself will reveal the secrets of how it was made: very bright lasers pointed at an impossibly precise stream of liquid tin droplets against highly polished mirrors that focus that EUV radiation against the silicon and masks that make the 2-dimensional planar pattern, then advanced techniques for lining up 2-dimensional features into a three dimensional stack.
It’s kinda like how we don’t actually know how Roman concrete or Damascus steel was made. We can actually make better concrete and steel today, but we haven’t been able to reverse engineer how they made those materials in ancient times.
Printed circuit boards were becoming “commonplace” (according to Wikipedia) and the transistor had been invented about 9 years before, so they’d probably be able to figure out at least conceptually what they were looking at. In other words, it’s not as if it would seem like a magical rock etched with runes or something, like it would if you showed it to somebody from 1556.
Therefore, I think they’d get out a microscope and oscilloscope and start trying to reverse-engineer it. Probably speed up the development of computer technology quite a bit, by giving them clues on what direction to go.
Knowing what something is doesn’t necessarily teach people how it was made. No matter how much you examine a sheet of printed paper, someone with no conception of a laser printer would not be able to derive that much information about how something could have produced such precise, sharp text on a page. They’d be stuck thinking about movable metal type dipped in ink, not lasers burning powdered toner onto a page.
If you took a modern finFET chip from, say, the TSMC 5nm process nodes, and gave it to electrical engineers of 1995, they’d be really impressed with the physical three dimensional structure of the transistors. They could probably envision how computers make it possible to design those chips. But they’d had no conception of how to make EUV at wavelengths necessary to make the photolithography possible at those sizes. No amount of the examination of the chip itself will reveal the secrets of how it was made: very bright lasers pointed at an impossibly precise stream of liquid tin droplets against highly polished mirrors that focus that EUV radiation against the silicon and masks that make the 2-dimensional planar pattern, then advanced techniques for lining up 2-dimensional features into a three dimensional stack.
It’s kinda like how we don’t actually know how Roman concrete or Damascus steel was made. We can actually make better concrete and steel today, but we haven’t been able to reverse engineer how they made those materials in ancient times.