Online Extra: The Father of Flash

Remove the outer shell of any new cell phone, digital camera, or portable music player, and you'll find a "flash memory" chip inside. That tiny sliver of transistors is the unsung hero of the Digital Era. Invented in the early 1980s by Fujio Masuoka, then a mid-level factory manager at Japan's Toshiba, flash memory added a new dimension to what silicon chips could do.

In the world before flash, most memory chips only retained data as long as the power was turned on. That meant important data and programs had to be stored on magnetic tape or a hard disk. But neither of those devices was ideal: They were slow to play back and susceptible to bumps and jolts, which could damage their delicate moving parts.