The right to print transistors at the leading edge has changed continents twice in forty years. GCA and Perkin-Elmer built the first commercial steppers in Massachusetts. Nikon and Canon took the market in the 1980s by being more disciplined manufacturers. ASML took it back in the 2000s by being a more disciplined platform-builder — while no one was watching.
GCA Corp ships the first commercial wafer stepper in 1978. Perkin-Elmer dominates contact and projection aligners. Together with SVG, U.S. firms hold 80%+ of the world stepper market.
By 1985, both Bedford and Wilton are on a glide path to insolvency. American customers, hit by the DRAM crash, stop reordering. Japanese tools quietly arrive on every leading-edge fab floor.
Nikon, working under MITI's VLSI consortium, takes apart a GCA stepper and builds a better one. By 1989 Nikon and Canon together hold ~70% of the global stepper market — 49% Nikon, 29% Canon at peak.
Their lithography tools, paired with sixty years of camera-grade optical engineering, run every advanced fab from Hsinchu to Hillsboro through the 1990s. ASML, the third name on the list, holds maybe 16%.
TWINSCAN ships in 2001. Burn Lin's July 2002 SEMATECH speech kills 157nm and pivots the industry to 193nm immersion — ASML's bet, not Nikon's. By 2009 ASML holds 67% of the market. By 2015, >80% by revenue.
Then EUV. Nikon withdraws from the program around 2014. Canon defects to nanoimprint. By 2019 ASML's EUV share is, mathematically, 100%. There is no second supplier.