Comment by Retric
4 days ago
Not sure what you mean by that. There was a bunch of computing technology long before photolithography or even transistors. And mores law was coined in 1965 when individual chips had far less than 10^6 transistors while the first one was made by hand.
Indeed, I often think if I were transported to the past I would use rivers and dams to make logic gates.
If you were transported to the past with the knowledge you currently possess as a result of the work already done, sure.
Developing it from scratch is a whole other matter.
Similarly, I would like to think that if I had been born a hundred years earlier, I would have invented something like MONIAC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine