Since its infancy, modern computer memory, namely RAM, has suffered from a fundamental problem. It remembers things when it has power, but pull the plug out and its carefully held pattern of Os and 1s fades and dies. The traditional solution is to use disks or tapes to save the contents of the computer's memory more permanently but these have disadvantages. They are slower than RAM, and their motors and other moving parts use more electricity and do not like being shaken around.
In 1967 Simon Sze and Dawon Kahng invented a transistor that could remember a programmed state even without power. They programmed their "floating gate transistor" by forcing electrons onto a part of the transistor that was normally electrically isolated—the floating gate. When the power was turned off, this electrical charge was trapped, potentially for years.
While memory chips based on Sze and Kahng's invention were produced, they were complicated and expensive. In 1980 Toshiba's Fujio Masuoka (b. 1943) made a crucial improvement. Realizing that a lot of the complexity was in the clearing of the memory, where each individual memory cell was erased one by one, he came up with a new design. His method connected blocks of memory cells together, and allowed them all to be erased at once—in a "flash."
Masuoka's "flash" memory was cheaper to produce and is now used in any portable application where batteries might fade or devices might be dropped, such as mobile phones, digital cameras, and music players. As its capacity increases, and price comes down further, it is also replacing hard disks and tapes in video cameras and laptop computers, making them lighter and more reliable than ever.
