Chip War sounds like a follow-up book to the Glasgow ice cream wars. Rather, it is an exhaustive account by Boston Massachusetts historian and associate professor, Dr Chris Miller, of how harnessing computing power globally has all but created the modern digital age. Well, almost exhaustive. Unfortunately, it omits the key part Scotland played in the development stage of the computer’s heart: the microchip. A role going well beyond the mere apocryphal.
Chip War (2022, Simon & Schuster, London) describes microchips are ‘the new oil’ and follows decades-long battles to control the world’s most critical technological resource. With the West and China increasingly in conflict and Taiwan wedged in the middle, today’s military, economic and geopolitical power is built on a foundation of computer chips – from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock markets. Read semiconductors or integrated circuits.
It is widely accepted that a small company in California called Intel developed the planet’s first microprocessor in 1971. However, Edinburgh-based freelance WIN technology and business consultant, James McGonigal, told me that in the late 1960s there was significant interest from companies aiming to further reduce size and cost of desktop calculators. Without getting too technical, discrete transistors were employed, then logic-and-custom medium-scale integration. These advanced towards the digital holy grail: the vision of a single chip calculator.
A microprocessor development taking off in Glenrothes, designed for the burgeoning calculator market, can be seen to have both paved the way and become inextricably-linked to such a vision and more likely than not, ahead of Intel. Elliott Automation was a significant British computer maker who realised the need to progress its own semiconductor technology.
In 1966, they established the facility in Fife’s New Town to manufacture resistor-transistor logic and diode-transistor logic, graduating to the establishment of a metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) research laboratory. Elliott merged with English Electric in 1967, then GEC bought EE two years later and closed the Glenrothes production plant. Key tech individuals involved either linked up in partnership or went their separate ways within the industry.
McGonigal, who has worked in senior tech roles at Raytheon, Babcock International Group, and latterly as North and Central Europe manager with Teledyne Technologies, remains convinced that global microprocessor foundations were firmly laid in Glenrothes.
For me, it’s likely that this is the case and the single chip development breakthrough travelled westwards across the Pond. Such a key development was probably swallowed up in what Tufts described as a situation where chipmakers ‘jealously guarded’ their critical technologies, often as a short-term measure when a company was losing market share or in need of financing and didn’t have the luxury of focusing on the long-term.
I would also argue that they weren’t necessarily too worried about whose intellectual property rights (IPR) an actual idea either belonged to or emanated from, in what was a fierce commercial drive to be ahead of international competitors.
Scotland’s version of the Valley, ‘Silicon Glen’, it should be noted, had its origins in the electronics business with Ferranti establishing a plant in Edinburgh as far back as 1943, joined by Marconi, Barr & Stroud, Honeywell, NCR Corporation and IBM. All forming a world-class cluster, as traditional heavy industries such as shipbuilding and mining declined. The Glen’s bedrock significantly influenced semiconductor design and manufacturing, starting in 1960 with Hughes Aircraft, now Raytheon, followed a few years later by Elliott Automation, then General Instrument, Motorola and National Semiconductor.
Fast forward into the 1990s and at its peak the Glen produced 30% of Europe’s personal computers, 80% of its workstations and 65% of ATMs, plus a significant percentage of integrated circuits. Collapse of the global hi-tech economy in 2000 signalled the closure of manufacturing outlets and mass layoffs.
Back to Chip War and for the author, a Yale and Harvard scholar and associate professor at Tufts University. Its publication is timely. It comes as the planet’s demand for integrated circuits – read semiconductor chips – exceeds supply, with shortages leading to inevitable major price rises affecting around 170 industries. Anything from cars to household appliances, video games consoles and computers, either desktop or personal, and the trusty mobile that all but controls our digital lives. It’s a situation exacerbated by a permanent Sino-US trade war, the lingering Covid-19 pandemic and now Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine.
Today, Scotland continues to host a significant semiconductor design community of inward investment companies from all over the world. Unfortunately, such a remarkable post-Second World War research and development capability and contribution hasn’t merited a mention in Chip War . An omission that might be put right in any revised edition of the book.
Former Reuters, Sunday Times, The Scotsman and Glasgow Herald business and finance correspondent, Bill Magee is a columnist writing tech-based articles for Daily Business, Institute of Directors, Edinburgh Chamber and occasionally The Times’ ‘Thunderer’
By Bill Magee | 23 November 2022