Early in the Computer Age, the first general purpose computers weighed about 27 tons and required the equivalent of a small studio apartment to support the thousands of vacuum tubes, crystal diodes, relays, resistors, capacitors and hand-soldered joints that made up the entire system.

Today ─ more than half a century later ─ computers are being made smaller, more compact, and designed to work faster in order to suit more mobile tech-savvy customers.

Surfing the Internet, checking e-mails or setting your fantasy sports lineup can now be done from the convenience of a laptop computer, cell phone or iPod Touch hand-held device. And many restaurants, coffee shops and neighborhood parks, including Manhattan’s own Bryant Park in Midtown, offer free WiFi access, so customers and visitors alike can sip their lattes or bask in the sun while shopping online or browsing the Web remotely.

One of the elements behind what many believe to be the greatest technological advancement of our time lies in the copper that makes all this always-on conductivity and connectivity possible.
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