IT was in mid-March of 1968 that the Swindon Advertiser saw the future being made.

The location was Plessey’s factory and lab in Cheney Manor and the future was being produced one tiny sliver at a time.

“Designers at a Cheney Manor factory,” we revealed, are working on devices which promise to make the biggest impact on electronics since the transistor radio replaced the old bulky portables and their glowing glass valves.

“The components which are being developed at the Plessey Company’s Semi-Conductor Division are merely minute flakes of silicon – the basic element of most transistors – no bigger than the head of a pin.

“But like snowflakes these tiny black chips under a microscope show a maze of detail, with a mass of ‘wiring’ linking transistors, resistors and capacitors, just like the printed circuit board which you find inside any transistor portable.

“Originally these micro-circuits were developed for the space race, where the complex electronics of rockets and satellites meant that everything had to be reduced in size.

“Similarly, as computers became more and more involved, so their circuitry was replaced with silicon chips, and a production line at semi-conductor is now working on computer circuits.”

The computers in question were still very much of the old fashioned variety, with banks of spinning reels and flashing lights.

It would be a decade before most people had even a vague knowledge of what silicon chips were for, and that awareness came courtesy of the first home computer revolution and the arrival of Space Invader consoles.

We photographed the staff hard at work, among them a be-suited Michael Gay, who was working on a mock-up of a record player circuit.

We added: “And soon the Silicon Integrated Circuit, or SIC as the technicians refer to it, will be as well-known as the transistor is now.

“Just a name to watch out for in next year’s colour television sets, radios and record players.

“You probably won’t notice them, but they will be there.”