Inside every processor is a flat piece of silicon, usually smaller than a fingernail. To see it you have to sand or dissolve the package away and photograph what is left through a microscope. A handful of people do this and give the pictures away, most of all Pauli Rautakorpi, ZeptoBars in Moscow, John McMaster and a photographer who posts as Fritzchens Fritz. These are the 356 processors they have photographed, from 1972 to 2024.

Click a chip to see it large. True scale draws the 114 whose size we know at the same scale, so a 1970s chip is a speck next to a modern one.