You don't need chips for computers. Until the mid-1960s no computers used chips. The early PDP-8 models (introduced beginning in 1965) were desktop minicomput

You don't need chips for computers. Until the mid-1960s no computers used chips. The early PDP-8 models (introduced beginning in 1965) were desktop minicomputers made entirely with discrete transistors and magnetic core memories. They were used in lots of automated process-control applications. There is some confusion in this question and many of the reponses here between any electronics (computation and control using tubes dates from WWII at least), transistors (which became widely available in the mid-1950s, all-transistor computers reached the market in 1959), small scale integrated circuits that contained (for example) several logic gates or a few flip-flops (which reached the market in the mid-late 1960s) which were used to build computers but also many simpler electronic control devices, and finally microprocessors which finally reached the market about 1975. Any electronics that reached the market before the mid or late 1970s did not use microprocessors. For example, the first commercial CT scanner used a Data General Nova minicomputer, which used small-scale integrated circuit logic gates, but did not use a microprocessor. The original Pong arcade game used around 60 small-scale integrated circuit logic gates, but no microprocessor. If we didn't have integrated circuits, but were stuck with 1959 discrete transistors, or we didn't have microprocessors, but were stuck with 1974 small-scale integrated circuits, we could still have a pretty hi-tech world. There would be more emphasis on optimized design of special-purpose devices - that original Pong game is an example.