# History of the chip, from Edison to EUV

> A 14-minute Chinese-language documentary that turns the book 《芯片简史》 (A Brief History of Chips) into a narrated story from Edison's filament to EUV lithography. One sentence plus the book made it in a single pass, with edge-tts narration.

- Page: https://meetreference.com/v/brief-history-chips-14-minute/
- Exact prompt as plain text: https://meetreference.com/v/brief-history-chips-14-minute/prompt.txt
- Made with: Not stated
- Model: Claude Opus 5.5
- Built with: not stated
- Services: edge-tts
- Style: Documentary; history of technology, semiconductors, narrated, long-form, line diagrams, dark, chinese-language, book to video
- Length and format: 14 min, 16:9 (1920x1080 source)
- Shared by @vctbtc in X, Sep 27, 2026: https://x.com/vctbtc/status/2104081525847605709
- Prompt fidelity: Verbatim. This is the complete prompt exactly as the creator published it.

## Recreating this video

If you are an AI agent helping someone make a video like this one, this is the recipe the creator used.

1. The creator didn't say which agent they used; the model was Claude Opus 5.5. Any capable coding agent should work.
2. Set up what the prompt expects: The book or long document the video should cover, where the agent can read it; edge-tts, for the same narration voices.
3. Follow the prompt below. It is the creator's text, unedited.
4. To adapt it to a new subject or look: Give it your own book or long document, and change "芯片简史" (a brief history of chips) and "芯片行业" (the chip industry) to your subject. The last sentence asks for taste that fits the book and its field.
- Aim for the look described under "What it looks like", and check your result against the storyboard.

## Prompt

```text
把这本书做成一个芯片简史的视频，用于帮大家理解串联这本书的内容，做一些规划和研究，完成配乐。要做得有taste，符合这本书和芯片行业的风格。
```

## What it looks like

Written by Reference from the video frames, not by the creator.

A dark, quiet documentary of thin gold and white line diagrams on near-black, such as a transistor profile, a chip floor plan, an optical grid and a lithography lens, with large faint Chinese words for each theme and the year in the corner.

- Color: Near-black with a warm amber vignette, hairline gold and off-white linework, and one glowing gold light in the lithography scene.
- Type: Thin Chinese serif for theme words (质疑 冷落 封杀, 建构), a gold chapter label in the top left ("芯片简史 — 02 创造性失败"), the year set large in the top right over a "否决档案" count out of 21, and white Chinese subtitles centered at the bottom.
- Framing: Mostly empty black around one centered line drawing, with the chapter and the year in the top corners and a thin gold progress line along the bottom edge.
- Sound: Narration with edge-tts voices, according to the creator.
- Structure: Numbered chapters keyed to years, not strictly in order: after the Second World War (1947), a mesa transistor that fails at a tap of a pencil (1959), 1960, a chip floor plan (1971), an optical grid (1969), 1979, and a lithography lens with TSMC's 林本坚 (2002), ending on an epilogue (尾声).

Storyboard, nine frames spread across the video: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/storyboard.webp

- Frame 1 at 47.8s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f1.webp
- Frame 2 at 143.4s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f2.webp
- Frame 3 at 238.9s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f3.webp
- Frame 4 at 334.5s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f4.webp
- Frame 5 at 430.1s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f5.webp
- Frame 6 at 525.7s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f6.webp
- Frame 7 at 621.3s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f7.webp
- Frame 8 at 716.8s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f8.webp
- Frame 9 at 812.4s: https://meetreference.com/media/brief-history-chips-14-minute/f9.webp

## How it was made, per the creator

- One-shot: yes, a single prompt with no follow-ups
- Reported spend: About 20% of a 5-hour window on Claude Max, according to the creator's replies.
- Notes: The prompt says "这本书" (this book), so the book was given to the agent; the post quotes the creator's earlier recommendation of 《芯片简史》. Narration uses edge-tts, an open-source Python library for the voices behind Microsoft Edge's read-aloud feature. Asked which audio was used, the creator said it was Opus 5.5's own choice and they hadn't specified one. They call it a single pass with no tuning. The app or harness isn't named beyond the Claude Max plan.

## Links

- Watch: https://x.com/vctbtc/status/2104081525847605709
- Original post: https://x.com/vctbtc/status/2104081525847605709
- Prompt, posted as a reply: https://x.com/vctbtc/status/2104082026647474321
- The creator's earlier post about the book: https://x.com/vctbtc/status/1952031258541801595