The Chip that Changed the World

When Kilby arrived at TI in the summer of 1958, he found the place virtually deserted. He had been hired to work in the area of miniaturization, and he had the laboratory in that area largely to himself, because having not accrued enough vacation time3, he stayed back at the lab when many of his colleagues were taking their summer vacations.

Kilby’s challenge was to work on connecting miniaturized components–what TI called the Micro-Module. The company had already developed a prototype that ran wires through a stack of miniature components that were stacked vertically; however, Kilby believed a horizontal layout would be more efficient. With no one else around, he decided to try things his way, hoping he could possibly come up with an alternative to the Micro-Module before everyone came back from vacation.

By manufacturing all pieces together, Kilby believed, there would be no need to wire anything together since all the connections would go inside the chip. And, by eliminating the wiring and the connections, many components could be included on one chip. On July 24, 1958, Kilby wrote in his lab notebook what would come to be known as The Monolithic Idea. It stated that circuit elements such as resistors, capacitors, distributed capacitors and transistors, if all made of the same material, could be included in a single chip.

By September, he was ready to demonstrate a working integrated circuit built on a piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. Several executives, including former TI Chairman Mark Shepherd, gathered for the event on September 12, 1958. What they saw was a sliver of germanium, with protruding wires, glued to a glass slide. It was a rough device, but when Kilby pressed the switch, an unending sine curve undulated across the oscilloscope screen. His invention worked — he had solved the problem.

Kilby had made a big breakthrough. But while the U.S. Air Force showed some interest in TI's integrated circuit, industry reacted skeptically. Indeed the IC and its relative merits " provided much of the entertainment 4 at major technical meetings over the next few years," Kilby wrote.

In February 1959, Kilby and TI filed a patent for the "Miniaturized Electronic Circuit." The following month, TI introduced the integrated circuit at the Institute of Radio Engineers Show, offering the devices for sale at $450 each. Just four months later, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor filed a patent for a semiconductor that was remarkably similar to Kilby’s, but based on a different manufacturing process.

This set off a long battle between the two companies over ownership of the integrated circuit concept. In 1962, TI filed a lawsuit for patent interference5, which wasn’t settled until 1969 when the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals ruled in favor of Noyce’s technology. This ruling would prove to have little effect on the blossoming semiconductor industry, which would end up paying licensing fees to both 6 companies for their contributions to the technology - TI for the basic integrated circuit structure and Fairchild for the manufacturing process and interconnection techniques.

Although still the subject of some debate even today, most in the scientific and engineering community agree that Kilby and Noyce deserve joint credit for inventing the integrated circuit. Some distinction is made between the contributions of both men – Kilby often receives credit for building the first working integrated circuit, and Noyce is credited with improving it for industrial purposes. Both men were awarded the National Medal of Science and both were inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

Besides being most noted for his work on the integrated circuit, Kilby holds more than 50 patents for his work in this area. He also is the inventor of the miniature calculator, which debuted in 1965. He left TI in 1970 to become a freelance inventor, and was a Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas University from 1978 through 1985.

Impact

The impact of Kilby's tiny chip has been far-reaching. Many of the electronics products of today could not have been developed without it. The chip virtually created the modern computer industry, transforming yesterday's room-size machines into today's array of mainframes, minicomputers and personal computers. The chip restructured communications, fostering a host of new ways7 for instant exchanges of information between people, businesses and nations.

For Texas Instruments, the integrated circuit has played a pivotal role. Over the years, the company has produced billions of chips. But the integrated circuit has done more than help grow TI. It has enabled an entire industry to grow. Since 1961, the worldwide electronics market has grown from $29 billion to nearly $1,150 billion. Projections indicate that it will become the world's single largest industry.

This growth will depend on the continued development of newer and better technologies - like those being developed at TI's new research and development center in Dallas.

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