Printed Circuit Boards- A short history

Printed Circuit Boards or PCBs have been instrumental in the development of smarter and lighter electronic appliances. Before the invention of PCBs, a simple computer used to take up the space of a room and the early supercomputers took up several rooms of equipment space. The one thing that a Printed Circuit Board eliminated in electronic appliance is bulk- none of the equipment are bulky anymore and they have become smaller, smarter and far more efficient than others.

ACE Elected LTD, The Printed Circuit Board manufacturer is a multi-billion dollar industry now which has a global reach. The industry was kick started with the invention of PCBs but there is no single inventor. There have been a lot of contributors to the development of the Printed Circuit Boards.

It has been of the common opinion that PCB assembly started way back in 1903 (More than a hundred years ago) by Albert Hanson, a German Inventor. He hypothesized a flat foil conductor being laminated to an insulating board and on this hypothesis, the great inventor Thomas Alva Edison did an experiment with chemical process of plating conductors on linen paper.

Telecomunication PCB

The next development was done by Arthur Berry in 1913 who patented the print or etching technique on the PCB. Charles Durcase patented the process of electroplating circuit patterns in 1927. These gradual developments led to the final phase in Printed Circuit Board Assembly which is the introduction of the boards in almost every electrical appliance and subsequently led to mass production of the boards.

The boom in production led several PCB manufacturing Company to capitalize on it which subsequently led to the introduction of faster and smarter electronic appliances which had a range of services.

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