The recently-departed Chuck Peddle [1], designer of the MOS 6502, caused me to fall down a wiki hole for a bit and I learned that IC failure rates, right off production back in the 1970's, was something surprisingly dismal like... 70% were good? Can't find the original article but it illustrated that a LOT of silicon was melted back down and reused until MOS Tech came along, refined some of the processes to increase reliability and the industry followed behind.
Edit: found it... [2] tl;dr: MOS's advancements resulted in IC production success rates of 70% or more, and were markedly worse before (lows of a 30% success rate would still be considered profitable or successful).
Edit: found it... [2] tl;dr: MOS's advancements resulted in IC production success rates of 70% or more, and were markedly worse before (lows of a 30% success rate would still be considered profitable or successful).
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847718
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology#Mask_fixing