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PCBs are the neatest and professional-looking among the assembled circuit types. But soldering is still required on the copper patterns on the board. In the early 1900s, before printed circuit boards existed, the only way circuits were made for electrical or electronic components was by wiring them point to point on a chassis. These chassis were either a pan or a sheet of a metal frame with a wooden bottom. The components attached to this chassis were connected with either wire connector lugs or crimp connectors or via jumper wires by soldering their ends or some other method. These primitive methods made circuits very fragile and large or bulky, and their production was very labor-intensive, so the products were expensive. Albert Hanson, a German inventor, thought flat foil conductors joined with a board insulated in multiple layers in 1903. The very next year, in 1904, Thomas Edison was experimenting with chemical methods to plate conductors on paper. But it wasn’t before 1913 that the printing and etching method was patented; Arthur Berry in the UK coined this method. These printed circuits did not come into common consumer electronics until the 1950s.
