The main objective of this course is to provide students with a broad vision about the evolution of technology, in the modern age, since its early beginnings, by describing the significance of the 3 Industrial Revolutions throughout time, since the 1st initiated with the Steam Engine (James Watt-1763), followed by the 2nd started with the inventions of Electrical Power Generation (Michael Faraday-1831) and the Combustion Engine (Siegfried Marcus-1864), until the 3rd kicked-off with the discovery of the Transistor (John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley-1947) that really marked the commencement of what is now known as the Information Technology Revolution, led by continuous and fast developments in Electronics, Computing and Telecommunications. Current state-of-the-art and well-known information technology platforms and gadgets will be briefly introduced at the system-level related with their human interfaces, in particular the internet, the mobile phone, the computer, the video game console, the media player, the global positioning system (GPS), and as a motivation for showing what is underlying inside such systems in terms of Electronics. Then, an evolution of silicon semiconductors from the original transistor until the present microchips and fiber-optics networks will be described with projections into the future in terms of unlimited circuit integration (processing capability related with the number of transistors on a chip) and bandwidth availability (speed of communications).

CILO-1: To recongize evolution of technology throughout the centuries as well as its great contribution in shaping the current and future world. CILO-2: To indentify the importance at the heart of all present technological developments – Electronics, and in particular to one of its core components – The Transistor.