A Short History of Circuit Boards

You don't need to be a historian, but knowing how the industry got here helps you sound credible and explains why customers ask about certain things (like "Are you IPC certified?" or "Can you do HDI?").

Before PCBs (Pre-1940s)

Early electronics were hand-wired. Inside a 1930s radio, you'd find a wooden or metal chassis with vacuum tubes mounted on it, and individual wires soldered point-to-point between every component. It was slow to build, error-prone, heavy, and hard to repair.

The Invention (1940s)

Paul Eisler, an Austrian engineer working in England, is credited with inventing the modern printed circuit board around 1936–1943. His idea: instead of running individual wires, etch the wires directly onto a flat insulating board out of copper foil. The technique was first used in proximity fuses for anti-aircraft shells in World War II.

The Boom (1950s–1960s)

After the war, the U.S. military released the technology for civilian use. The 1950s saw early consumer radios and TVs adopt single-sided PCBs. The transistor (1947) and the integrated circuit (1958) made PCBs essential — these tiny new parts needed precise, repeatable wiring.

Multilayer and the Computer Era (1970s–1980s)

As products got more complex (calculators, mainframes, early PCs), engineers needed more connections than they could fit on one or two layers of copper. Multilayer PCBs were invented — boards with internal copper layers sandwiched between insulating material. By the 1980s, 4-layer and 8-layer boards were common in computers.

This is also when surface-mount technology (SMT) took over from through-hole assembly, allowing components to sit flat on the board surface instead of having leads poked through holes. SMT made boards smaller, faster to assemble, and cheaper.

The Globalization Wave (1990s–2010s)

PCB manufacturing largely migrated from the U.S. and Europe to Asia — first Japan, then Taiwan and South Korea, and eventually mainland China. By 2020, China made over half of the world's PCBs. The U.S., once a powerhouse, fell to roughly 4% of global PCB output.

The Reshoring Era (2020s–Today)

Three forces are bringing PCB manufacturing back to North America:

1. Geopolitical risk — supply-chain disruptions, tariffs, U.S.–China tensions
2. Defense and aerospace requirements — DoD demands U.S.-made boards for sensitive programs (ITAR, "Made in USA," "trusted supplier")
3. Speed and flexibility — engineers want quick-turn prototypes and short lead times that overseas suppliers can't always match

For a salesperson, this is good news. Domestic PCB demand is growing, and customers actively want to find U.S. or North American suppliers.