I know he's not a tuba player, but this one man made a huge imprint on our world. Unbelievable that he accomplished the whole thing during someone else's vacation.
Jack Kilby, inventor of integrated circuit, dies
Tue Jun 21, 2005 5:28 PM ET
By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, the basis of the computer chip revolution and foundation of what is now a trillion-dollar industry, died of cancer on Monday.
Kilby, 81, made the discovery 47 years ago, when, as a recently hired engineer at Texas Instruments Inc., he was left to work alone in a laboratory while most of his 7,500 colleagues were taking a company-wide summer vacation leave.
As a new hire, Kilby did not qualify to take a vacation in August 1958.
"It was a very quiet time and he got a lot done," said Pat Weber, 65, a long-time colleague and friend of Kilby's, who retired as vice chairman of Dallas-based Texas Instruments in 1998. The company announced his death on Tuesday.
Kilby, a seminal 20th-century inventor whom many place in the same league as Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for his work.
By hand-wiring together multiple transistors, Kilby's invention -- about half the size of a paper clip -- spawned a revolution in miniaturization in which millions of circuits are now housed on tiny pieces of silicon used in devices from computers to elevators to pacemakers.
Working in parallel at pioneering Silicon Valley company Fairchild Semiconductor, Kilby's rival Bob Noyce sketched out his own ideas for an integrated circuit in an engineering notebook -- then forgot about it, according to a new biography of Noyce's life.
Kilby, on the other hand, immediately recognized the value of his invention and built a working prototype in a matter of days, according to associates at Texas Instruments.
Our world woiuld be very different today, that's for sure!
Can you imagine what most of the devices we take for granted would look like if assembled of discrete components? Or what they would cost? Many things wouldn't be possible (e.g. the PC).
I've still got some old DTL and RTL ICs in the dusty corners of my hellbox. I still remember the feeling of "This is going to be big!" when I bought them.
With the way TI operated back in those times, it's a wonder that someone didn't say "that's nice, kid" and file the work away to be forgotten.
As to why it wasn't covered in the news... I suspect that it wasn't considered as newsworthy as the following story:
"Paris Hilton's dog took a chunk out of a 'Today' show producer's hand yesterday morning just before mom Kathy Hilton was about to promote her new show, 'I Want to Be a Hilton,'" Page Six says. "Before she was interviewed by Katie Couric, Kathy was sitting in the green room when an unidentified segment producer came in and said, 'Oh! Tinkerbell!' The producer put her hand in Tink's Louis Vuitton carrying case and 'the dog bit her hand!' our insider shrieked."
Chuck(G) wrote:As to why it wasn't covered in the news... I suspect that it wasn't considered as newsworthy as the following story:
"Paris Hilton's dog took a chunk out of a 'Today' show producer's hand yesterday morning just before mom Kathy Hilton was about to promote her new show, 'I Want to Be a Hilton,'" Page Six says. "Before she was interviewed by Katie Couric, Kathy was sitting in the green room when an unidentified segment producer came in and said, 'Oh! Tinkerbell!' The producer put her hand in Tink's Louis Vuitton carrying case and 'the dog bit her hand!' our insider shrieked."
