In the late 70s, some in this country were ready to concede the dominance of industrial innovation and manufacturing to Japan. In the early 80s, with Japanese cars and electronic products beating American counterparts in every category of technical excellence, many here were lamenting that the day they might not own anything made in the U. S. A. was approaching frighteningly fast.

Thankfully, Messrs. Gates and Jobs entered the stage and proceeded to spoil the party for the great people of the land of the rising sun—Steve Jobs downsized the computer into a desktop, and Bill Gates took the concept and turned it into a revolution. Microsoft and Apple, together with Intel, AMD, and IBM, have significantly altered the global industrial landscape. Today, more than 90% of the computers in the world have something made in the U. S. A. inside—either the logic chip or the OS, often both. I bet it's not easy for the Japanese to fathom that, as we speak, there is no such thing as Toshiba Microprocessor or Sony Operating System.