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Texas Instruments began in 1930 as Geophysical Service Incorporated, which set off dynamite and read seismic reflections to help oil companies find deposits. In World War II it applied the same signal processing to submarine detection gear for the U.S. Navy. It reorganized as Texas Instruments in 1951 after finding General Instruments taken, paid Western Electric $25,000 in 1952 for a transistor patent license and hired Bell Labs chemist Gordon Teal, whose team produced the first commercial silicon transistor in 1954. That year TI helped create the Regency TR-1, the first commercial transistor radio, using cheaper germanium, and in September 1958 Jack Kilby demonstrated the integrated circuit, work that later won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics.

TI built a three-pound handheld calculator prototype, the Cal Tech, in 1967, patented the first single-chip microprocessor in 1973 and released the Speak and Spell in 1978. Its TI-99/4A home computer shipped 5,000 units a day by late 1982, yet TI left the home PC market by the end of 1983. Its defense arm developed forward-looking infrared, terrain-following radar and Paveway laser guidance before TI sold it to Raytheon in 1997 for nearly $3 billion. Today analog chips and embedded processors bring in over 80% of revenue, a position strengthened by the $6.5 billion purchase of National Semiconductor in 2011.

• In the 1960s TI worked on Project Vela, detecting Soviet underground nuclear tests.
• The Speak and Spell used linear predictive coding to model the human vocal tract and synthesize speech on one chip.
• Calculators are under 3% of revenue, and a TI-84 Plus costs an estimated $15 to $20 to make while selling for over $100.
• The TI-83's Z80 processor let students code games shared on ticalc.org, and in 2009 TI sent DMCA takedown notices after hobbyists published its signing keys.
• TI invented DLP in 1987, a chip of microscopic mirrors used in many digital cinema projectors.

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In 1986 Taiwan's government recruited industry veteran Morris Chang, then in his mid-50s, to build a domestic chip industry. Chang proposed a pure-play foundry that would manufacture chips for other companies and design none of its own. Texas Instruments and Intel turned him down, but Philips took a 27.6% stake for $58 million, transferred technology and supplied first CEO James E. Dykes, while the National Development Fund put up 48.3% of the startup capital and wealthy local families were pressed to cover a 20% shortfall. TSMC became the first foundry to bring 7nm and 5nm chips to market, began 3nm volume production in late 2022 and shifted to gate-all-around nanosheet transistors for 2nm chips in late 2025.

In 2025 TSMC reported $122.42 billion in revenue and over $55 billion in net income, and by mid-2026 it was the world's largest non-U.S. company by market value. Chip shortages and U.S.-China tension pushed it abroad: JASM in Kumamoto, Japan, with Sony and Denso; ESMC in Germany with Bosch, Infineon and NXP; and Arizona, where a $12 billion plan approved in 2020 grew to $265 billion in planned U.S. investment by July 2026, supported by $6.6 billion from the CHIPS Act. Construction in Arizona costs at least 50% more than in Taiwan, skilled workers are scarce, and volume production at the second Arizona plant slipped to 2027 or 2028.

• Berkshire Hathaway bought a $4.1 billion stake in late 2022 and sold 86% of it months later, citing geopolitical tensions.
• In October 2024 TSMC told the U.S. Commerce Department that one of its chips had reached a Huawei device through a proxy company.
• In August 2025 two current and six former employees were accused of taking 2nm trade secrets, and one former employee had gone to Tokyo Electron.
• In 2024 its Hsinchu fabs used over 150,000 tons of water a day, about 10% of the city's supply, and TSMC reclaims over 85% of its process water.
• In 2021 TSMC and Foxconn spent up to $175 million on 10 million BioNTech vaccines and donated them to Taiwan.

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In June 1959 the Del E. Webb Development Company paid over $20 million for 20,000 acres of the Marinette and Santa Fe ranches from the J.G. Boswell Company, on the site of the former ghost town of Marinette. A nationwide naming contest, with a new house as the prize, replaced the working name Marinette Retirement Community with Sun City. On opening weekend, January 1, 1960, about 100,000 people came, ten times the expected crowd, and the event landed on the cover of Time. Webb repeated the model with Sun City West in the late 1970s, Sun City Grand in the late 1990s, Sun City Anthem in 1999 and Sun City Festival in July 2006.

Sun City lies about 16 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix, with streets laid out in concentric circles that form four pinwheels. The 2020 census counted 39,931 residents with a median age of 72.6, just 1.2% under 18, and 45.9% of households made up of people living alone. The community has eight golf courses, seven recreation centers, the Sun Bowl amphitheater and lawn bowling greens that hosted the South Central Division of the 2019 U.S. Lawn Bowling Open. The Sun City Homeowners Association campaigned to keep the area unorganized school district territory to hold down property taxes, so the few local children attend Peoria Unified or Dysart Unified schools.

• Sun City Stadium opened in 1971, was the Milwaukee Brewers' spring training home from 1973 to 1985 and was razed in 1995.
• A horizontal sundial built in 1973 and renovated in 2011 runs 64 feet long with a 36-foot gnomon.
• In Spur Industries v. Del E. Webb Development Co. in 1972, Arizona's Supreme Court ordered a cattle feedlot to move but made Webb pay because it came to the nuisance.
• Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, president of the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989, lived in Sun City.
• Zuni Hills Elementary School belongs to the Peoria district but carries a Sun City postal address.

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Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe in Palo Alto in 2010, when accepting payments online meant weeks of merchant accounts, payment gateways and card security work. Stripe let developers take payments by adding a few lines of code, selling to engineers instead of chief financial officers. In 2011 it raised $2 million from backers including Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It then added Atlas for Delaware incorporation in 2016, Issuing for company cards in 2018 and Capital for automated cash advances in 2019, along with in-person card readers, Tax, Identity and Link, which passed 200 million users by September 2025.

In July 2022 Stripe cut its internal valuation from $95 billion to $74 billion and later laid off 14% of its staff, and in January 2025 it let go nearly 300 more workers. In March 2026 the FTC warned Stripe and other processors about debanking people over political or religious activities. A February 2026 tender offer valued Stripe at $159 billion after it processed $1.9 trillion for five million businesses in 2025. It bought stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion, wallet company Privy and AI billing platform Metronome, finalized a $7.5 billion purchase of OpenRouter in August 2026, and in July 2026 joined Advent International in a $53 billion bid for PayPal.

• Stripe Capital reads real-time sales data with machine learning and collects repayment as a share of future daily sales.
• Stripe Climate grew into Frontier, a $925 million advance market commitment for carbon dioxide removal.
• An automated offboarding glitch sent laid-off employees an email with a cartoon duck, and the chief people officer apologized.
• The Bridge, Privy and Metronome deals target instant stablecoin microtransactions and usage billing for AI agents.
• Stripe runs dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin.

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Stephen M. Ross started in 1972 with a $10,000 loan from his mother, founding Related Housing Companies to build subsidized low and moderate income apartments. Working with federal tax credits, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, state finance agencies and local zoning boards taught him how to combine public policy and private capital. In 1998 Related announced the $1.7 billion Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, later renamed the Deutsche Bank Center, which combined luxury residences, a Mandarin Oriental hotel opened in December 2003 and the Shops at Columbus Circle in 2004. Within four years of opening, retail rents in the surrounding area rose 400%.

Ross became chairman in September 2012 and handed the CEO title to Jeff Blau as Related took on Hudson Yards, a 28-acre site over an active rail yard covering parts of Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen that opened its first phase in 2019 as the largest private real estate development in U.S. history. Related also built the $1.3 billion Grand LA designed by Frank Gehry and remains the largest private owner of affordable housing in the country. It broke ground on Willets Point, New York City's largest affordable housing project in 40 years, in December 2023. In July 2024, at 84, Ross moved to non-executive chairman, leaving Jeff Blau, Bruce Beal Jr. and Kenneth Wong in charge.

• At Hudson Yards, caissons were sunk into bedrock between active tracks to carry platforms for towers, public squares and The Shed.
• In 2014 the Department of Justice sued Related and other New York developers over alleged failures to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Related Argent is developing Brent Cross Town, a 180-acre neighborhood in North London, and a merger with Boston's Beal Companies created Related Beal.
• Related Digital broke ground on a $1.2 billion data center campus in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in October 2025.
• Related Midwest's 128-acre Quantum Shore Chicago site is set to host the country's first utility-scale quantum computer.

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In November 1956, Hungarian rebels drove a captured Soviet T-54A into the courtyard of the British embassy in Budapest, and military attache Lieutenant Colonel Noel Cowley measured its armor and gun. His data showed the West's 20-pounder gun could not defeat the T-54's front, making the U.S. M48 obsolete, while the replacement T95, with its X-shaped vapor cycle engine, kept breaking down. The XM60 program began in 1957 with testing and production running at once. Engineers rejected a 120mm gun whose two-piece ammunition cut fire to four rounds a minute, chose the 105mm M68 based on the British L7 for seven rounds a minute, and dropped siliceous-cored glass armor in 1958 for sloped rolled steel. More than 15,000 were built.

The M60 merged the medium and heavy tank roles into the main battle tank, and by 1963 the Marines had replaced their M103 heavy tanks with it. The 1962 M60A1 added a long needle-nose turret holding 63 rounds. The M60A2 "Starship," built from 1973 to 1975, carried a 152mm gun launcher for wire-guided missiles that proved unreliable, and the M60A3 added a laser rangefinder, ballistic computer and thermal sight. Israel used its Magach versions in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and fitted explosive reactive armor by the 1982 Lebanon War. The U.S. retired the M60 in 1997, and over 20 nations still use modified versions.

• 1959 Ordnance Technical Committee minutes named it Tank, Combat, Full Tracked, 105mm Gun, M60, so it was never officially a Patton.
• The tall M19 cupola let the commander fire a .50 caliber machine gun under armor but made the tank a bigger target.
• In Grenada in 1983, Marine M60A1s with Israeli reactive armor pushed inland to rescue Navy SEALs at the Governor General's mansion.
• In the 1991 Gulf War, Marine M60A1s used thermal sights to find Iraqi T-72s through smoke from burning oil wells.
• Iran's Zulfiqar mounts a Russian 125mm smoothbore, and General Dynamics pitched the M60-2000 with an Abrams turret on an M60 hull.

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In the late 13th century the kingdom of Singapura sat on the north bank of the Singapore River, the only port in the southern Strait of Malacca. Chinese trader Wang Dayuan's 1349 account lists exports of raw cotton, laka wood and hornbill casques, and a 1984 excavation at Fort Canning Hill led by John Miksic uncovered 14th-century porcelain and glassware. The rise of the Malacca Sultanate sidelined the port, and an Acehnese naval force destroyed it in the early 17th century, leaving the island largely abandoned for about 200 years. In 1819 Stamford Raffles saw the deep, sheltered waters of Keppel Harbour, reclaimed riverbank land for Chinese and English traders and declared a free port, pulling the Chinese junk trade away from Dutch Batavia by the 1830s.

Singapore became a coaling station for steamships in the 1840s and later a staple port that processed tin, rubber and crude oil from British Malaya. Separation from Malaysia in 1965 cost it that hinterland, so it turned to export manufacturing, oil refining and wafer fabrication. In 2024 it handled 41.1 million TEUs, about 90% of them transshipment, and in 2025 it sold 56.77 million tons of marine fuel and logged a record 3.22 billion gross tons of vessel arrivals. It is now closing its city terminals by 2027 and Pasir Panjang by 2040 to consolidate operations at Tuas.

• After Malacca's rise, Singapore was reduced to cutting blackwood that Chinese traders turned into furniture.
• Raffles' layout put Chinese trading houses on the lower river and English warehouses upriver to match their different trading seasons.
• Tuas opened in September 2022 with three berths, reached 11 by early 2025 and is on track for 18 by 2027.
• Fully built, Tuas will be twice the size of Ang Mo Kio town, with 26 kilometers of deep-water berths.
• Over 1,000 battery-powered driverless vehicles and about 1,000 automated yard cranes move containers without drivers.

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William Shockley earned his undergraduate degree at Caltech and a physics PhD at MIT in 1936, then joined Bell Labs, where in 1947 he co-created the first solid-state transistor with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Bell Labs put Bardeen and Brattain ahead of him on the patent and kept passing him over for promotion because of his abrasive management. After a 1953 sabbatical at Caltech, he won funding from Arnold Beckman, inventor of the electronic pH meter, and in 1956 opened Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California, chosen so he could live near his aging mother in Palo Alto. East Coast veterans turned him down, so he hired young scientists including Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce.

Shockley bet on silicon over germanium, but growing single-crystal silicon boules above 1,400 degrees Celsius was hard, and he steered the team toward a secret four-layer diode the lab could not reliably build. When a secretary cut her finger, he suspected sabotage and ordered staff to take polygraph tests. Eight employees asked Beckman to replace him, and when Beckman sided with Shockley they resigned in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor, earning his label "the traitorous eight." His lab was sold to Clevite in 1960, then to ITT, and closed in 1968.

• Texas Instruments had started making commercial silicon transistors in 1954, a year before Beckman backed Shockley.
• The four-layer diode latched on or off with a single pulse, replacing several components in a switching circuit.
• The eight were Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts.
• A 2014 count traced over 2,000 companies to the eight and the people they hired, including 92 public firms worth a combined $2.1 trillion.
• The lab at 391 San Antonio Road was a produce market by 2006 and now has a monument with a 2N696 transistor and the four-layer diode.

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Atlantic City began as a summer retreat for the Lenape before Dr. Jonathan Pitney promoted the barrier island in the 1850s as a health resort, at a time when doctors believed in miasma theory and prescribed sea air. With Samuel Richards he built the Camden and Atlantic Railroad from Philadelphia, and when trains arrived in 1854 the 600-room United States Hotel spread across 14 acres. In 1870 hotel owner Jacob Keim and railroad conductor Alexander Boardman proposed the first boardwalk to keep sand off expensive hotel carpets, and by 1874 almost half a million passengers a year came by rail. Reinforced concrete hotels such as Josiah White III's Marlborough-Blenheim followed in 1905, and Mayor Edward Bader added an airport, Convention Hall and the Miss America Pageant in 1921.

Under political boss Enoch "Nucky" Johnson the city ignored Prohibition, and in May 1929 Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano met there to organize a national crime syndicate. Highways such as the Garden State Parkway, home air conditioning and cheap flights then drained the resort trade. New Jersey voters rejected statewide casinos in 1974 but approved them for Atlantic City in 1976, and Resorts International opened in May 1978. Competition from Connecticut's Foxwoods and from Pennsylvania followed, Superstorm Sandy struck in October 2012 with a record low pressure of 943 millibars, and in 2014 Showboat, Revel, Trump Plaza and the Atlantic Club all closed.

• The original boardwalk was taken apart and stored in a barn every winter.
• Saltwater taffy got its name in 1883 when candy merchant David Bradley sold stock soaked by a storm flood.
• Liquor ships anchored past the three-mile limit on Rum Row while fast boats ran cargo into the city's marshy inlets.
• Ruth Hoskins' 1929 Monopoly board mapped city streets, and its cheap Baltic and Mediterranean avenues sat in redlined Black neighborhoods.
• Despite about $3 billion a year in gaming revenue, the city went nearly 28 years without a full grocery store, and the state committed $20 million to Renaissance Plaza.

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Samsung Electric Industries was formed in Suwon in 1969 under a group that once traded fertilizer and sweeteners, and it had no basic technology of its own. It learned to build black and white TVs, calculators and refrigerators through joint ventures with Sanyo and NEC, and public anger over the Japanese partnerships forced a promise to export everything those ventures made. In 1974 it bought the struggling Korea Semiconductor, and in 1983 founder Lee Byung-chul issued the Tokyo Declaration committing Samsung to DRAM memory. By licensing designs from Micron and Sharp and building fabs before it fully understood them, Samsung closed an estimated 10-year technology gap by 1987.

Its first mobile phone in 1988 flopped, and in the early 1990s Motorola held over 60% of South Korea's phone market to Samsung's 10%. Samsung turned to selling top components to other brands and declared 1996 the Year of Design Revolution. It kept growing through the 1997 Asian financial crisis, passed Sony as a brand in 2005, Motorola in phones in 2007 and Hewlett-Packard in sales in 2009, all while supplying memory to Apple and fighting it in patent suits in 2011 and 2012. In 2024 the National Samsung Electronics Union struck for a 15% profit share, and high bandwidth memory demand for AI drove a $36.15 billion operating profit in the first quarter of 2026.

• During the 1997 crisis, 16 of South Korea's 30 largest companies collapsed while Samsung kept growing its earnings.
• Galaxy phones catching fire in 2016 forced a global recall and led to bans on bringing them onto flights.
• Taiwan fined Samsung for astroturfing after it covertly funded negative online commentary about competitors.
• U.S. and EU regulators fined Samsung in 2009 and 2010 over memory chip and LCD price-fixing cartels, though it avoided the heaviest EU penalty by informing on the cartel.
• The advocacy group SHARPS fought for years over leukemia and other cancers among chip plant workers before an apology and compensation framework were settled in 2018.