[Deathwatch] Jack Kilby, inventor of integrated circuit, 81

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Jack Kilby, inventor of integrated circuit, dies

By Eric Auchard

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. 

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary