Many moons ago man invented CMOS Complimentary Metal Oxide on Silicone A transistor etched onto silicone that requires virtually no power to stay in its state, ie: open or closed Just a tiny almost non-existent amount of electrical energy required to keep it in an open or closed state. Ideal for non volatile RAM applications as all it required was a tiny rechargeable cell. Unfortunately it had this drawback, to make the transistor required a very very thin layer of insulation called the dialectric and this could be breeched by a small amount of potential (voltage) and destroyed easily by static electricity. So about a day after they discovered this they also started building in something called a Z diode, any significant amount of static would cause the Z diode to divert the static electricity to ground and all was well. But too late! Everyone ever since has to wear anti-static armbands and if they don't then they are in dire risk of being severely reprimanded by a 'manager' who really doesn't know about these things but only knows about how to reprimand people. Z diodes ay? If only they'd put them in before I blew the SID chip on my commodore 64
