It's the Most Indispensable Machine in the World.It Depends on This Woman.

The microchips that rule our lives only exist because of a company you've never heard of-and hidden figures like Brienna Hall

- BEN COHEN

Brienna Hall has the most valuable role that you'll never see at the most vital company that you've never heard of.

Until she began working at ASML, she didn't know the first thing about the company. She also didn't know what she would be doing as a customer-support engineer-a "fancy mechanic," as she calls herself.

And she had absolutely no idea that it would be essential to the global economy.

When she reports for her shift at a chip plant, Hall slips into a bunny suit. She enters a room where the pristine air is 100 times cleaner than a hospital operating room's. Then she makes her way over to an unfathomably complex machine.

Her job is to know everything about it-so that she can fix it.

"I thought I had the coolest job ever," Hall says. "I didn't process the fact that this job is necessary for our entire world to exist as it does." The piece of equipment that the entire world has come to rely on-and she is specially trained to handle is called an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine.

It's the machine that produces the most advagies that sound more like science fiction breakthroughs so improbable that they were once dismissed as impossible. And it has transformed wafers of silicon into the engines of modern life.

Even today, there are only a few hundred of these EUV machines in existence and they are ludicrously expensive. The one that Hall maintains cost $170 million, while the latest models sell for roughly $370 million.

But maybe the most remarkable thing about these invaluable machines is that they're all made by the same company: ASML.

ASML is the glue holding the chip business together. That's because this one Dutch company is responsible for all of the EUV lithography systems that help make the chips in so many of your devices. Like your phone. And your computer. And your tablet. And your TV. Maybe even your car, too.