article_snippet: (CNN)In 1971, a physicist conceptualized the existence of a fourth fundamental element in the electronic circuit, besides the three that were already in use at the time.
article_snippet: His name was Leon Chua and His believed -- for reasons of symmetry -- that an extra component could one day be constructed to join the resistor, the capacitor and the inductor.
article_snippet: His called it "memristor", a portmanteau of the words memory and resistor.
article_snippet: The transistor, developed in 1947, is the main component of computer chips.
article_snippet: In a transistor, once the flow of electrons is interrupted by, say, cutting the power, all information is lost.
article_snippet: Transistors are based on silicon, a rigid material whose properties are used to manage the flow of electrons, and thus information.
article_snippet: In 1975, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, formulated a famous law which states that the number of transistors in an electronic circuit doubles approximately every two years.
article_snippet: There is a physical limit to the number of transistors that we can pack on a chip, and we are already approaching the miniaturization threshold of this technology.
article_snippet: Now that we have that capability to manufacture long before we could actually build one, the "missing fourth element" of electronics -- despite its less than catchy name -- might be the key to many further human discoveries.