Virtually all of today's mass produced electronics hardware is manufactured using surface mount technology, SMT. The associated surface mount devices, SMDs provide
many advantages over their leaded predecessors in terms of manufacturability and often performance.
It was not until the 1980's that surface mount technology, SMT became widely used. Once SMT started to be used, the change from conventional leaded components to
surface mount devices, SMDs took place quickly in view of the enormous gains that could be made using SMT.