From 1976-1978, at Hughes Microelectronics in Newport Beach, California, the practicality, reliability, manufacturability, and endurance of the Floating Gate EEPROM—an electrically erasable device using a thin gate oxide and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling for writing and erasing—was proven. As a significant foundation of data storage in flash memory, this fostered new classes of portable computing and communication devices that allow ubiquitous personal access to data.