Jack Kilby, inventor of integrated circuit, dies

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Claudio Gutiérrez <claudio.gutierrez.m () gmail com>
Date: June 21, 2005 10:22:30 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Jack Kilby, inventor of integrated circuit, dies


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.

COLD WAR SPACE RACE

Development of the integrated circuit was driven by the Cold War  
space race with the Soviet Union after the 1957 launch of Sputnik,  
the first satellite in space.

"The drive was to integrate all these electronic components into one  
device," said Kevin McGarity, 60, a retired former head of sales at  
Texas Instruments. "It sounds so simple today. But it's actually  
revolutionary."

The integrated circuit initially helped Texas Instruments win a  
contract to supply chips for the Minuteman rocket.

Kilby and Texas Instruments were first to patent the integrated  
circuit. Noyce, who later co-founded Intel Corp , and Fairchild  
Semiconductor are credited with making the integrated circuit  
manufacturable on a mass production basis. While the competition  
sparked a 25-year patent battle between the companies over royalties  
from the invention, the "Kilby patent" weathered all legal challenges.

Jack St. Clair Kilby was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, on Nov. 8,  
1923, and spent his childhood in rural Western Kansas. He graduated  
from the University of Illinois with a degree in electrical  
engineering in 1947 -- the year the electronic transistor was  
invented at AT&T. Kilby worked at Centralab, an early electronic  
circuit designer, for 11 years.

A holder of 60 patents who went on to become co-inventor of the first  
handheld electronic calculator, Kilby worked at Texas Instruments  
from 1958 until 1970 and continued on as a consultant until 1983.  
Texas Instruments is now the world's biggest maker of microchips used  
in mobile telephones.

http://www.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml? 
type=technologyNews&storyID=8855168



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