50 years ago today, Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working IC for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000.Kilby's chip contained transistors, resistors and diodes all made out of germanium and connected to eachother with gold wires. Making them from the same material was a revolutionary concept in 1958. Industry practice then was to make discrete devices in the material best suited to their function.
With characteristic modesty, Kilby commented: "It contributed very little to scientific thought."
The same year, Bob Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild and Intel, fabricated, on a single piece of silicon, a number of components joined together by evaporated aluminium connections
In 1959 both Kilby and Noyce filed for patents. Kilby and TI received
The year before the Kilby and Noyce circuits, the the UK's Plessey made the world's first model of an integrated circuit, based on the ideas of Geoffery Dummer of the Telecommunications Research Establishment which was demonstrated at the 1957 International Symposium on Components in Malvern, Worcs.
Leave a comment