Jack Kilby's first integrated circuit (Click on photo for larger view) (photo courtesy Texas Instruments)

Before the integrated circuit, computer architecture was comprised of either electro-mechanical connections that opened and closed or of vacuum tubes.

But in 1958, a new engineer, Jack Kilby, was hired at Texas Instrumentsover the summer when most of his department was on vacation. Fiddling around and trying to make himself useful while acquainting himself with his new employer, Kilby built a crude but working model that combined two transistors onto a single board -- the first integrated circuit.

Unknown to Kilby, Jean Hoerni and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor were simultaneously working on their own integrated circuit design -- and applied for their own patent in 1959. After years of litigation, the two companies eventually settled their differences and cross-licensed each others' technology.

Today, Kilby and Noyce are generally credited as independent co-inventors of the integrated circuit.

Texas Instruments' Jack St. Clair Kilby Biography Page Encyclopædia Britannica: Invention of the transistor Tech Encyclopedia: Integrated Circuit

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