Types of circuits Д®lectronic circuit functions can be divided into two function groups: analog and digital.

Passive electronic components are capacitors, inductors, resistors, whilst active components are such as semiconductor devices transistors and thyristors, which control current flow at electron level. Components may be packaged singly, or in more complex groups as integrated circuits. Components are connected together, usually by being soldered to a printed circuit board (PCB), to create an electronic circuit with a particular function. Present day branches of electronics Д®lectronics in 2022 has principal branches as follows:Д®lectronic devices and components Д®lectronics technician performing a voltage check on a power circuit card in the air navigation equipment room aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72).ДЄn electronic component is any component in an electronic system either active or passive. In 2008, billion-transistor processors became commercially available.

This led to the idea of integrating all components on a single-crystal silicon wafer, which led to small-scale integration (SSI) in the early 1960s, and then medium-scale integration (MSI) in the late 1960s, followed by VLSI. The circuits could be made smaller, and the manufacturing process could be automated. The invention of the integrated circuit by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce solved this problem by making all the components and the chip out of the same block (monolith) of semiconductor material. The electric signals took time to go through the circuit, thus slowing the computer. If the components were large, the wires interconnecting them must be long. A complex circuit like a computer was dependent on speed.

ДЄs the complexity of circuits grew, problems arose. The MOSFET is the basic element in most modern electronic equipment. It revolutionized the electronics industry, becoming the most widely used electronic device in the world. Its advantages include high scalability, affordability, low power consumption, and high density. The MOSFET was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. The MOSFET (MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications. From that time on transistors were almost exclusively used for computer logic and peripherals. ordered all future IBM products to use transistors in their design. The 608 contained more than 3,000 germanium transistors. In April 1955, the IBM 608 was the first IBM product to use transistor circuits without any vacuum tubes and is believed to be the first all-transistorized calculator to be manufactured for the commercial market. Vacuum tubes are still used in some specialist applications such as high power RF amplifiers, cathode ray tubes, specialist audio equipment, guitar amplifiers and some microwave devices. Since then, solid-state devices have all but completely taken over. However, vacuum tubes played a leading role in the field of microwave and high power transmission as well as television receivers until the middle of the 1980s. The next big technological step took several decades to appear, when the first working point-contact transistor was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Labs in 1947. The early growth of electronics was rapid, and by the 1920s, commercial radio broadcasting and communications were becoming widespread and electronic amplifiers were being used in such diverse applications as long distance telephony and the music recording industry. Vacuum tubes (Thermionic valves) were the first active electronic components which controlled current flow by influencing the flow of individual electrons, They were responsible for the electronics revolution of the first half of the twentieth century, They enabled the construction of equipment that used current amplification and rectification to gives us radio, television, radar, long-distance telephony and much more. Practical applications started with the invention of the diode by Ambrose Fleming and the triode by Lee De Forest in the early 1900s, which made the detection of small electrical voltages such as radio signals from a radio antenna possible with a non-mechanical device. The identification of the electron in 1897, along with the subsequent invention of the vacuum tube which could amplify and rectify small electrical signals, inaugurated the field of electronics and the electron age.

One of the earliest Audion radio receivers, constructed by De Forest in 1914.Д®lectronics has hugely influenced the development of modern society.

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