The invention of the computer is often articulated like a three-act play: the idea of the computer arrives, then there is the process of how to make the computer and, finally, there is the creation. But as University of Delaware doctoral student Ingrid Burrington points out, the story of computers—plural—is a much more nuanced and ongoing narrative in which we still exist. 

This is because the ingenuity required to achieve such a feat extends far beyond the brainpower of material scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley responsible for the first computer’s creation. Sure, those big brains developed the hardware and software we’ve come to rely on to power our daily lives. Yet, consider the materials involved in its development — the minerals and crystals and transistors that make the computer function. Where did they come from? How were they sourced and delivered into an operational device called a computer?

“Although those scientists and engineers were important, they would not have been able to do their work without someone buying quartz crystals from largely indigenous men working in remote jungles of Brazil, using hand tools to pick out individual crystals and evaluate them for quality,” said Burrington. 

Understanding the supply chains involved in sourcing high purity quartz is the focus of a paper authored by Burrington, a second-year doctoral student in UD’s Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences. The paper, recently published in a Special Issue of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, draws from a chapter in Burrington’s UD master’s thesis in geography and spatial sciences, which she completed in 2023.

She is advised at UD by Julie Klinger, an associate professor in the department, whose research interests include the dynamics of global resource frontiers, including mineral supply chains.

Mineral supply chains

In the paper, Burrington focuses on supply chains specific to the sourcing of high purity quartz used in the production of silicon found in transistors that fuel our electronic devices. 

While research has been done on modern day minerals and the mining practices involved, Burrington was interested in understanding when the United States began sourcing materials for computers. 

“It’s not as if computers made in 1980 didn’t require rocks, too,” said Burrington. “The imperatives may have changed because people carry smartphones in their pockets instead of relying on massive IBM mainframes, but the question that I am asking about everything is often: how did we get here?” 

Silicon computers

In the case of computers, how we got here can often be summarized with one element in particular: silicon. Burrington wanted to examine the sourcing of silicon chips because she noted that there is often a mention in computer marketing of silicon being found in sand. Yet, the material purity necessary to manufacture silicon chips is rarely found in geological deposits, much less in sand on a typical beach.

“There’s conflation that emerges of, basically, computers are made of sand,” said Burrington. “Aside from that not being the case and having never been the case, the question of what are computers comprised from instead is pretty hard to answer in the sense of what kind of silicon do you need and where do you get it from?” 

This question sent Burrington down a rabbit hole to determine where the people who invented the first silicon transistors in the 1950s were able to get their high purity quartz. Using historical newspaper material found at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, as well as catalogs from quartz vendors and research to learn about scientific lab equipment used in transistor manufacture, Burrington tried to find information about the sourcing of these raw materials. 

“From that work, I can say with reasonable confidence that the kind of high purity quartz that you would need to make the ultra-pure silicon that is needed to make a computer chip in the late 1950s would have probably been sourced from Brazil,” said Burrington. 

Brazilian quartz

Burrington explained that mining for quartz in Brazil partly came about because of American demand for the material during World War II. This demand was not for computers, which hadn’t been invented yet, but for making radio oscillators. Radio oscillators are electronic components used to generate alternating current (AC) radio frequencies used in broadcast communications, such as radios, televisions, satellites and the like. This is achieved by vibrating or oscillating crystals attached to electrodes, to generate a current. Voila, electricity.

According to Burrington’s research, in WWII, the United States invested significant money in building mines for many different materials, like quartz, but also for manganese and tantalum. The U.S. subsequently built infrastructure to transport the materials and there were entire highways that existed in Brazil which were made possible by this mining activity. 

Around 1974, a transition occurred when a U.S. supply chain emerged and Brazil was no longer the primary vendor for the United States’s high purity quartz supply. 

The reason: advances in mineral separation technology had enabled the ability to take large amounts of rock from a deposit in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, and separate out the quartz from everything else. Additionally, Brazil was trying to limit exports while also encouraging buyers of their quartz to build factories in Brazil — which foreign manufacturers didn’t want to do. 

The historical context faded from memory, resulting in a limited narrative of the true process and players behind the birth of today’s global network.

“There is a version of how the 20th century progressed that looks like this: At first, things weren’t very globally connected and then they were, and that is mainly because of technology,” said Burrington. “But [the truth is] that technology could not have existed had there not already been those global connections.” 

Shining a brighter light on these wider connections is a big part of Burrington’s paper. The history of inventive material scientists and engineers at large American corporations would not have been possible without the help of indigenous labor in a foreign country, she said. 

It’s also a lesson for humanity: the world is often more intricately connected than it may sometimes appear on the surface.

“It's never just one singular achievement by a small group of people,” said Burrington. “It is this larger, sprawling network of different kinds of labor. The history of computers as a commodity and product is a history of labor. It’s a history of sourcing materials and the chicanery of corporate investment and the ways to keep a company running and all of this more gritty and weird stuff.”