Jack Kilby and the 1st Integrated Circuit (IC)

Sep 12, 1958 - Jack Kilby presented an electronic circuit at Texas instruments which is now recognized as the 1st integrated circuit. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2000. To congratulate him, American President Bill Clinton wrote, "You can take pride in the knowledge that your work will help to improve lives for generations to come."

In mid-1958, Kilby, a newly employed engineer at Texas Instruments (TI), did not yet have the right to a summer vacation. He spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design that was commonly called the "tyranny of numbers", and he finally came to the conclusion that the manufacturing of circuit components en masse in a single piece of semiconductor material could provide a solution.

On September 12, he presented his findings to company's management. He showed them a piece of germanium with an oscilloscope attached, pressed a switch, and the oscilloscope showed a continuous sine wave, proving that his integrated circuit worked, and hence he had solved the problem. Along with Robert Noyce (who independently made a similar circuit a few months later), Kilby is generally credited as co-inventor of the integrated circuit.

The first working integrated circuit created by Jack Kilby. It contains a single transistor and supporting components on a slice of germanium and measures 1/16 by 7/16 inches (1.6 x 11.1 mm).

Jack Kilby went on to pioneer military, industrial, and commercial applications of microchip technology. He headed teams that built both the first military system and the first computer incorporating integrated circuits. He later co-invented both the handheld calculator and the thermal printer that was used in portable data terminals.

Source - Wikipedia