The Documentary:
This documentary shows the development of the silicon industry with a focus on Japan after World War II. It is an old-style documentary where they actually explain things and it's full of relevant information. Despite the success of silicon transistors, the road wasn't always smooth and there were a few key inventions that made our current technology actually feasible. Did you know that the first japanese transistors used in the radios were actually assembled by hand and for some time had quite a bad yield as low as 3%?
Watch for yourself on youtube:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkRwArnc1k
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGRNXmWng3M
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansXGewduN4
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40YwOg0_B8
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Foreword with regards to factorio:
The circuits in factorio are very black-boxish and it isn't really visible which technology actually stands behind them. In reality the development went something like this:
1. Movements are controlled by mechanical gears. They actually made mechanical calculators.
2. Relais allowed for better motor control and gigantic computers which could actually be programmed flexibly.
3. Valves are faster than relais and allow for analog, as well as, digital circuitry. They are used in radios, radars and early computers.
4. Transistors are smaller and less power consuming compared to valves. (Later also faster.) They now replaced valves but it took some decades.
5. The integrated circuit makes integration of many many transistors possible and pushes down power consumption per transistor to miniscule amounts.
Analog and digital circuitry developed in parallel. Only in the recent two decades the digital chips are really replacing most analog circuits.
A lot of things we do with highly integrated digital circuits today could be and have been actually done with more simple technology. This could be expressed a bit more explicit in factorio but it would change gameplay a bit. Currently you turn low-tech green circuits into red circuits and then purple ones. Let's say green ones are based on relais, red ones are based on transistors and purple ones are based on integrated circuits. It's obvious that in reality silicon chips ones are not made from compressed relais. The big cost for higly integrated circuits comes from the development cost and the cost of the factory used to make them. After everything is set up and researched the chips themselves are very cheap to make.
Getting the first microprocessor needed for rocket control was very very hard and resource intensive but now silicon chips a billion times more powerful have become dirt cheap. Instead of rocket ships, they now control your washing machine
