I want to power my Canon T3 from the car. That means getting a 12VDC output to a 7.4VDC. Easy, right?

First, deciding between a custom solution (pcb) and an off-the-shelf solution. Off-the-shelf solutions exist to convert 12VDC to various ranges - among them, 7.5VDC. Perfect.

But then comes a wrinkle: What size plug? I simply cannot find a plug for the DRE-10 battery eliminator. Or, rather, I can't figure out which plug it needs, since nothing will say. Okay, so here's a simpler solution: I can simply disassemble the battery eliminator a bit, and wire/solder to the appropriate terminals directly. That'll do the job, as it's unlikely that any plug - except one made specifically for it - will have the profile to fit inside the camera.

Then a thought: Not only do I want to power my camera, but also my external hard drive. I am getting large SD cards, but not large enough; I need to get two. While one fills up, I'd like to copy data from the other one. My hard drive takes a 12VDC 1.5A line. The aforementioned adapter offers a 12VDC 1.2A output. Good enough? Probably.

Rehosted from intel.com's archives are two original papers by Gordon Moore. The 1965 paper predicts the ability to cheaply integrate 65,000 devices onto an integrated circuit by 1975 (ten years later). Here is the quote that launched Moore's Law:

"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year (see graph on next page). Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000."

In addition, a wonderful quote we can only wish was still true:

"At present, packaging costs so far exceed the cost of the semiconductor structure itself that there is no incentive to improve yields, but they can be raised as high as is economically justified."

A second paper, from a 1975 speech, notes that "Complexity of integrated circuits has approximately doubled every year since their introduction," but makes a very accurate prediction that continues to hold:

The new slope might approximate a doubling every two years, rather than every year, by the end of the decade.