ABSTRACT
Microelectronics is a technology which will change life-styles and work-patterns as radically as did the harnessing of water and steam power in bringing about the first Industrial Revolution. A profound change took place when, in the later 1960s, the integrated circuit was introduced, micro-electronics became a reality, and the miniaturisation of many devices rapidly followed. Integrated circuits, formed on thin slices — or chips — of silicon or other inert materials, are produced by a process which allows very large numbers to be produced very speedily at an incredibly low cost. Progress with the use of micro-electronics in education generally is, therefore, likely to be slow. There is, however, another aspect of education in which microelectronics could pay a very significant part in assisting a truly major expansion and that is in what might be achieved through the inclusion of micro-processors in the domestic television receiver.
