[citation needed] In using the board, breaks are made in the tracks, usually around holes, to divide the strips into multiple electrical nodes.

The first single-size Veroboard product was the forerunner of the numerous types of prototype wiring board which, with worldwide use over five decades, have become known as stripboard.

[citation needed] New equipment using PCBs was displayed at the 1959 Radio and Electronics Components Manufacturers Federation (RECMF) Exhibition held in The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London.

[2] The usual configuration for most of the PCBs of that time had components placed in a regular pattern with the circuit formed by maze-like conductive pathways.

[citation needed] A patent application was immediately filed 25 May 1959[3] and the invention was developed for Vero by associates Winter, Fitzpatrick and machine shop engineers.

The leads are then soldered to the copper tracks on the other side of the board to make the desired connections, and any excess wire is cut off.

The continuous tracks may be easily and neatly cut as desired to form breaks between conductors using a 3 mm (⅛") twist drill, a hand cutter made for the purpose, or a knife.

[citation needed] In 1961, as production rates improved with experience, Vero Electronics Ltd was formed as a separate company to market the increasing sales of Veroboard.

[citation needed] As with other stripboards, in using Veroboard, components are suitably positioned and soldered to the conductors to form the required circuit.

Breaks can be made in the tracks, usually around holes, to divide the strips into multiple electrical nodes enabling increased circuit complexity.

The images of a binary decade counter sub-unit clearly show both the assembled components and the copper conductors with the required discontinuities.

[citation needed] A number of these sub-units were interconnected through connectors mounted on a motherboard similar to that shown in the Veroboard Display image and comprised a very early PCB-based backplane system.

Integrated circuits and the common layout of short parallel strips protruding from the sides of an IC package encouraged the development of specialist boards such as Verostrip.

However, a breadboard is not very suitable for prototyping that needs to remain in a set configuration for an appreciable period of time nor for physical mock-ups containing a working circuit or for any environment subject to vibration or movement.

On the other side the busses run in another direction, allowing compact layouts of complicated circuits by passing signals over each other on different layers of the board.