Alan The Handyman Blog

It was in the local rag. China is Idaho’s largest trade partner. Canada is second and Great Britain is currently running third.

Now I know what you are thinking: potatoes. You are wrong. Try integrated circuits.

Hey, we are not a bunch of country pumpkins out here.

Well, we are a bunch of country pumpkins but we make integrated circuits anyway.

You have a number of integrated circuits hanging around your place. The most obvious is the one that is monitoring your mouse movements while you search the web. It keeps track of the keys you hit on the computer, does mathematical operations and in general keeps your computer humming. That of course is the microprocessor in your computer.

There are microprocessors or other integrated circuits in you car (if it’s not a zillion years old), your television (if it doesn’t have tubes), your CD player, and your cell telephone. The darned things are just everywhere. A huge solar storm and we’ll all be back to the Stone Age (just kidding).

The first integrated circuit was invented by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. He received the Nobel Prize in 2000. Read about the components of integrated circuits and how they function at http://nobelprize.org/physics/educational/integrated_circuit/history/. You will find an adequate history there about the integrated circuit.

Over two-thirds of Idaho’s exports are technology products. Ninety percent of the products sent to China from Idaho are technology products. The combined annual export total to China of technology and agricultural products is $550,000,000.

We are going to give our teachers a raise.

Let’s see you beat that, Nevada!

The End

John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com, a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He is Executive Representative of IWS sellers of Tyler Hicks wealth-success books and kits. He also sells TopFlight flagpoles. He calls himself “Taylor Jones, the hack writer.”

More info: http://www.tjbooks.com

Business web site: http://www.aaaflagpoles.com