Editing Printed circuit board (section)

=== Post-war developments ===
In 1948, the US released the invention for commercial use. Printed circuits did not become commonplace in consumer electronics until the mid-1950s, after the ''Auto-Sembly'' process was developed by the United States Army. At around the same time in the UK work along similar lines was carried out by [[Geoffrey Dummer]], then at the [[Royal Radar Establishment|RRDE]].

Motorola was an early leader in bringing the process into consumer electronics, announcing in August 1952 the adoption of "plated circuits" in home radios after six years of research and a $1M investment.<ref>{{cite news |title=New Process Perfected for Radio Wiring |newspaper=[[Chicago Tribune]] |date=August 1, 1952 }}</ref> Motorola soon began using its trademarked term for the process, PLAcir, in its consumer radio advertisements.<ref>{{cite magazine |title='Travel and Play with Motorola' advertisement |magazine=[[Life (magazine)|Life]] |date=May 24, 1954 |page=14 }}</ref> Hallicrafters released its first "foto-etch" printed circuit product, a clock-radio, on November 1, 1952.<ref>"Topics & Trends of TV Trade." Television Digest 8:44 (November 1, 1952), 10.</ref>

Even as circuit boards became available, the point-to-point chassis construction method remained in common use in industry (such as TV and hi-fi sets) into at least the late 1960s. Printed circuit boards were introduced to reduce the size, weight, and cost of parts of the circuitry. In 1960, a small consumer radio receiver might be built with all its circuitry on one circuit board, but a TV set would probably contain  one or more circuit boards.

Originally, every electronic component had wire [[Lead (electronics)|leads]], and a PCB had holes drilled for each wire of each component. The component leads were then inserted through the holes and [[solder]]ed to the copper PCB traces. This method of assembly is called [[Through-hole technology|''through-hole'' construction]]. In 1949, Moe Abramson and Stanislaus F. Danko of the United States Army Signal Corps developed the ''Auto-Sembly'' process in which component leads were inserted into a copper foil interconnection pattern and [[Dip soldering|dip soldered]]. The patent they obtained in 1956 was assigned to the U.S. Army.<ref>{{Cite patent |country=US |number=2756485 |pubdate=1956-07-31 |title=Process of Assembling Electrical Circuits |assign1=[[Secretary of the United States Army]] |inventor1-last=Abramson |inventor1-first=Moe |inventor2-last=Danko |inventor2-first=Stanislaus F. }}</ref> With the development of board [[lamination]] and [[etching]] techniques, this concept evolved into the standard printed circuit board fabrication process in use today. Soldering could be done automatically by passing the board over a ripple, or wave, of molten solder in a [[Wave soldering|wave-soldering]] machine. However, the wires and holes are inefficient since drilling holes is expensive and consumes drill bits and the protruding wires are cut off and discarded.

Since the 1980s, surface mount parts have increasingly replaced through-hole components, enabling smaller boards and lower production costs, but making repairs more challenging.

In the 1990s the use of multilayer surface boards became more frequent. As a result, size was further minimized and both flexible and rigid PCBs were incorporated in different devices. In 1995 PCB manufacturers began using [[microvia]] technology to produce High-Density Interconnect (HDI) PCBs.<ref>{{US patent reference |number=5434751 |issue-date=July 18, 1995 |inventor1-first=Herbert S. |inventor1-last=Cole, Jr. |inventor2-first=Theresa A. |inventor2-last=Sitnik-Nieters |inventor3-first=Robert J. |inventor3-last=Wojnarowski |inventor4-first=John H. |inventor4-last=Lupinski |title=Reworkable high density interconnect structure incorporating a release layer }}</ref>