Two electrical engineers, working separately, each filed for patents for an invention called the Integrated Circuit (IC), and the electronic world would never be the same. The micro-chip was born, the tiny pieces of silicon that drive today’s computers.
It was 1959, and the transistor had been around for a dozen years. Vacuum tubes were in extensive use, still, in military mainframe computers and in consumer electronics, televisions, tape records and radios.
Transistors, as amplifiers, were slowly replacing tubes. Solid-state circuits were superior to tubes in size, reliability, low power consumption. But prior to automation and robots, transistor circuits were still fairly expensive and complicated to assemble.
This new thing, the size of a thumbnail, contained many component resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors completely wired together. It was a self-contained complete circuit for a specific task.
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce were born four years apart from two distant places. Without either knowing the other, both invented the Integrated Circuit almost simultaneously. The significance of the chip could not have been realized then, but has since been recognized as one of the most important innovations and landmark achievements in the history of mankind.
Texas Instruments filed for a patent in February, 1959. Only five months later, Fairchild Semiconductor also filed for a patent on a nearly identical invention. Fairchild engaged TI in a lawsuit for nearly a decade until mutually agreeing to cross-license their technologies.
Patent No. 3,138,743, for Miniaturized Electronic Circuits, was issued to Jack S. Kilby and Texas Instruments in 1964. Kilby currently holds patents on sixty inventions, including the electronic hand-held calculator (1967).
Patent No. 2,981,877 for the Planar Integrated Circuit was granted to Dr. Robert Noyce. Noyce was issued 16 patents, relating to semiconductors. before his sudden death on June 3, 1990, at age 62.
In those days, electrical engineers faced many technical problems expanding the potential of digital electronics. One of these was the Tyranny of Numbers, meaning, the greater number of separate components used to improve the design, the more parts that are required, because of physical properties.
Kilby
Jack Kilby’s invention of the Monolithic Integrated Circuit was conceptually simple, technically challenging, and socially pervasive. From it spawned the microprocessor, an efficient, convenient, affordable, and ubiquitous high-speed computing and communications device.
His accomplishment was manifest by “thinking outside the box.” His circumstances, and that of Robert Noyce, were remarkably parallel. Both recognized that silicon, not germanium, was part of the answer. But their respective employers, at the time, were not interested in funding foolhardy diversions.
He was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1923. His father was an electrical engineer. He served in WWII as a corporal. Jack is thoughtful, friendly, plain spoken, and an incisive thinker. He earned his BSEE degree (1947) from University of Illinois and MSEE degree (1950) from University of Wisconsin.
Kilby worked at Centralab (1947-58), an electronics manufacturer in Milwaukee that produced parts for radio circuits, televisions and hearing aids. His speciality was making smaller and more effective electrical components.
Centralab sent Kilby, in 1952, to Bell Laboratories for a transistor symposium. He witnessed the ground-breaking technology that had been invented by Bell Labs scientists John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain in 1947.
Germanium was originally the material of choice for transistors. Bell Lab scientists convinced Kilby that silicon, not the more popular germanium, to be a better material for semiconductors. Silicon, processed from sand, was also cheaper.
However, Centralab was not interested in silicon research. Kilby was pleased with his work and employer but realized the leading edge would be elsewhere.
Texas Instruments eagerly welcomed Jack Kilby into their employ in the summer of 1958. TI had also been licensed by Bell Labs for manufacturing transistors and had military contracts for silicon transistors.
Kilby, working alone in their laboratory, focused upon TI’s project, called the Micro-Module, or connecting miniaturized components. Kilby believed a horizontal layout would be more efficient. He hurried along, doing things his way, before everyone returned from vacation.
By manufacturing all pieces together inside the chip, he theorized, separate parts could be spared post production hand wiring, and more parts could be implanted. On July 24, 1958, Kilby wrote his Monolithic Idea into his lab notebook. Circuit elements, if all made of the same material, could be fabricated as part of a single chip.
Within a few months, Kilby had conceived and created his prototype, half the size of a paper clip. His microchip was submitted for patent and displayed at the Institute of Radio Engineers Show of 1959, for sale at $450 each. The fourth generation of computers was born.
The Fairchild Semiconductor device was remarkably similar to Kilby’s, but involved a different manufacturing process. Both men were awarded the National Medal of Science and inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.
Kilby pressed on. He developed the first industrial, commercial, and military applications for his integrated circuits. The computing industry, by the mid-1970s, was committed to the microchip: without it, no personal computer, fax machine, cellular phone, satellite television, or any other mass communication system, as we know it, would exist.
Modern microelectronics integrated circuit sales, in industrial, military, and commercial applications, was $154,700M for 1995.
Besides the hand calculator, Kilby also invented the thermal printer used in portable data terminals. An independent inventor and consultant since his retirement from TI in 1970, Jack Kilby is admired as much for his generosity as he is for his genius.
See part 2 next week about Robert Noyce’s contribution to the
Integrated Circuit Chip.