From the transistor to the end of scaling
A subject. The loosest grouping, and the one to reach for last.
One line, 1948 to 2020: a device is invented, a theory makes it manufacturable, a scaling rule makes it shrinkable, an extrapolation makes the shrinking an industry expectation, and then the physics stops cooperating.
Read in order the argument is legible. Bardeen and Brattain announce the point-contact transistor in two pages. Shockley supplies the junction theory that makes a manufacturable device possible. Dennard states the rule by which a smaller transistor is also a faster and cooler one, which is what made shrinking free. Moore, in a trade magazine and from five data points, extrapolates the component count ten years out; the industry then organises its roadmaps around the extrapolation and it becomes a law by being treated as one. Bohr, thirty years on, asks what Dennard's paper actually said. Theis and Philip, and Shalf, describe what happens when Dennard scaling ends but Moore's curve is still expected.
The through line is that each step buys the next one's assumption, and the last two records are about the bill.