Moore's Law
The observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years — an empirical trend that has held for decades and driven exponential growth in computing power.
Origin
Gordon Moore, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and later Intel, made the observation in a 1965 article for Electronics magazine titled "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits." He noted that transistor counts had been doubling roughly every year and predicted the trend would continue. In 1975, he revised the rate to a doubling every two years. Caltech professor Carver Mead coined the term "Moore's Law" around 1970.
Everyday Use
Your smartphone is millions of times more powerful than the computers that guided Apollo astronauts to the moon — and that's Moore's Law in action. It's why last year's laptop feels sluggish, why storage keeps getting cheaper, and why technology that seemed like science fiction a decade ago is now in your pocket.