After transistors had been firmly established, when microelectronics arrived, after scientific computers were slowly overshadowed by commercial applications and computers were mass-produced in factories, Heinz Billing left the computer field in which he had been a pioneer for nearly 30 years [REF].
In 1975, Billing acted on a proposal by Rainer Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) to use laser interferometry to detect gravitational waves.