Happy 55th birthday - Integrated Circuit
From
Electronic Design News magazine:
Kilby files patent for IC, February 6, 1959
Jack St. Clair Kilby filed his patent application for the integrated circuit on February 6, 1959, less than six months after the idea came to him.
Kilby first demonstrated a multivibrator circuit of discrete silicon elements in late August 1958 to his then new employer Texas Instruments. As a new employee, he was not yet entitled to the mass summer vacation that was customary among TI employees at the time. During this relatively quiet time around TI, Kilby first came up with the idea of the IC.
In September 1958, Kilby demonstrated the first IC to TI management. TI was supportive, but the reaction from potential users, specifically military organizations, was mixed. After much debate, a small group within the Air Force picked up on the IC.
Kilby filed for the patent, describing his new device as �a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated,� the following February. The basic elements used by Kilby -- bulk resistors, junction capacitors, oxide capacitors, mesa transistors, and inductances -- were described, as were the design parameters for each, in the filing. The patent was granted in June.
That patent got him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.
Jack also invented the Thermal Printer and the first hand-held calculator.
It has been a long fun ride and we aren't over yet. The next 100 years will be amazing if we don't blow it politically.
Posted by DaveH at February 6, 2014 8:08 PM