The basis of a microchip was the integrated circuit. One of the innovations necessary was a transistor. Then a transistor had to be designed to be really small inside an integrated circuit like a microchip. Once this was done this development really started to change the world until we have what we have available today and on into the future. However, the transistor we used in transistor radios was not invented until 1947 about 6 months after Roswell.
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small plate ("chip ...
illustration from Jack Kilby's inventor's journal.
integrated circuit
"What we didn't realize then was that the integrated circuit
would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million
to one, nothing had ever done that for anything before" - Jack Kilby
The Integrated Circuit
It seems that the integrated circuit was destined to be invented.
Two separate inventors, unaware of each other's activities, invented
almost identical integrated circuits or ICs at nearly the same time.
Jack Kilby,
an engineer with a background in ceramic-based silk screen circuit
boards and transistor-based hearing aids, started working for Texas Instruments in 1958. A year earlier, research engineer Robert Noyce
had co-founded the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. From 1958 to
1959, both electrical engineers were working on an answer to the same
dilemma: how to make more of less.
In designing a complex electronic machine like a computer it was
always necessary to increase the number of components involved in order
to make technical advances. The monolithic (formed from a single
crystal) integrated circuit placed the previously separated
transistors
, resistors, capacitors and all the connecting wiring onto a single crystal (or 'chip') made of
semiconductor
material. Kilby used germanium and Noyce used silicon for the semiconductor material.
Patents for the Integrated Circuit
In 1959 both parties applied for patents.
Jack Kilby
and Texas Instruments received U.S. patent #3,138,743 for miniaturized electronic circuits.
Robert Noyce
and the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation received U.S. patent
#2,981,877 for a silicon based integrated circuit. The two companies
wisely decided to cross license their technologies after several years
of legal battles, creating a global market now worth about $1 trillion a
year.
Commercial Release
In 1961 the first commercially available integrated circuits came
from the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. All computers then started
to be made using chips instead of the individual transistors and their
accompanying parts. Texas Instruments first used the chips in Air Force
computers and the Minuteman Missile in 1962. They later used the chips
to produce the first electronic portable calculators. The original IC
had only one transistor, three resistors and one capacitor and was the
size of an adult's pinkie finger. Today an IC smaller than a penny can
hold 125 million transistors.
Jack Kilby holds patents on over sixty inventions and is also well known as the inventor of the portable calculator (1967). In 1970 he was awarded the National Medal of Science. Robert Noyce, with sixteen patents to his name, founded Intel, the company responsible for the invention of the microprocessor,
in 1968. But for both men the invention of the integrated circuit
stands historically as one of the most important innovations of mankind.
Almost all modern products use chip technology.
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