Early marketing of typewriters was designed around the fact that most people using it would be women transcribing dictation. A U.S. census report from 1919 indicated that 81% of all typists were females working in offices (many in doctor's offices and hospitals).

What started the digital age?
Perhaps one of the most important inventions in the past 100 years is the microchip. This tiny integrated circuit is the heart and soul of every digital device in existence. It powers all kinds of consumer and medical devices including computers, cell phones, iPods and almost any other electronic device imaginable. In the medical field, researchers have developed a microchip-based device that can isolate, enumerate and analyze circulating tumor cells from a blood sample.

Due to the introduction of the microchip in the early 1970s, there have been more breakthroughs going from consumer to health care and health care to consumer than in any other period in time because of the microchip.

Perhaps one of its greatest early accomplishments has been ushering "the consumer" into the unbelievable era of personal computing.

In the late 1950s, electrical engineers Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) and Robert Noyce (Fairchild Semiconductor) were aware of the potential of digital electronics, but they faced a problem known as "Tyranny Numbers," or the exponential increase of a number of components required to design improved circuits - against the physical limitations derived from the number of components that could be assembled together.

They found a solution in the 'monolithic' (formed from one single crystal) integrated circuit by fabricating entire networks of discrete components in a single sequence, laying them into a single crystal (chip) of semiconductor material. Kilby used germanium while Noyce used silicon.

In 1959, Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor filed for a patent, engaging in a legal battle that lasted through the 1960s, until their technologies were cross-licensed.

Kilby holds patients on sixty inventions, including the invention of the electronic hand-held calculator in 1967. In 1970, he was awarded the National Medal of Science, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1982. The Patent for silicon based IC was granted to Robert Noyce, who founded INTEL in 1968. INTEL is responsible for inventing the microprocessor.

The computing power of the microchip continues to grow because scientists continue to find ways to make it smaller and store more data. This means medical professionals can store data, watch or record instructional videos, and verbally record notes and reminders on devices and with innovative new chips they can unite devices when they are in proximity to one another.

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