I can't imagine how to trace a parallel. Even before that, classical computers stayed a very long time "on the lab", and by that time the expansion in functionality was way more visible than any expansion of size. Only after people kind of agreed on what a "computer" can do (at the 40's) that we got any clear size expansion, that was exponential.

As a comparison, we have a very nice idea on the requisites of a quantum computer. Nobody is exploring this space. Also, we have that very clear linear growth on their size, while we didn't have even a clear size measure for classical computers.

It looks like something very different to me. Really, that linear growth is unsettling in many ways.