In article , "Bill Sohl"
writes:

Dee D. Flint, N8uZE

For all the complaining of lower standards...yada, yada,
yada, I find it amazing we have the incredible technology
advances, capabilities, etc which far exceed anything
we had 30 years ago. Just where and who do you
attribute those advances to...if not the new generation
of students graduating from our schools?

Invention of the transistor - 1947 by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley.

Invention of the integrated circuit - by Jack Kilby during a Texas
Instruments plant-wide vacation period when he was a new hire and
hadn't earned any vacation leave.

The cellular telephone was a US invention, a marriage of a handheld
radio (first by Motorola) and the US telephone system (a host of new
inventions all by itself).

The invention of the first microprocessor (Intel, up in Silicon Gulch)
opened the way for the modern PC...and all sorts of things from a
$40 lawn-sprinkler controller to a fully-automated cashier-receipt
maker-stock totalizer computer system in supermarkets.

The LED and LCD and TFT flat-screen display are all US inventions.

Both the space shuttle and the bikini swimsuit are inventions from
Southern California. :-)

"Lower standards?" Hmmm...in 2003 there is still a requirement for
demonstrated morse code skill to obtain two of the three US radio
amateur licenses. Morse code was first used commercially in
1844...in the USA. Seems like that "standard" has been inflexibly
kept for about 91 years in amateur radio!

LHA