Invention

The Integrated Circuit

Also Known As Microchip

Electrical Engineering

An integrated circuit fabricates many transistors and other components together on a single small chip of semiconductor material, rather than wiring separate discrete components by hand. Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments built the first working integrated circuit in 1958, and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor independently developed a practical silicon based version in 1959 that proved easier to manufacture and became the industry standard.

Facts

Disputed

Year

1958 1

Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments built the first working integrated circuit in 1958, using germanium. Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor independently developed a practical silicon based integrated circuit in 1959 that proved easier to manufacture and became the industry standard. The two men are jointly credited as co-inventors; Kilby alone received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000, by which time Noyce had died and the prize is not awarded posthumously.

Patent or First-Use Date

1958-09-12 1

Jack Kilby's first working integrated circuit, demonstrated at Texas Instruments, September 12, 1958.

Significance

The integrated circuit drove decades of exponential improvement in computing power and cost, making possible the personal computer, the mobile phone and the modern internet. 1

FAQs

Who really invented the integrated circuit: Jack Kilby or Robert Noyce?

Kilby built the first working circuit in 1958; Noyce made the practical silicon chip that modern ICs follow.

Both are credited, for different steps. Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments demonstrated the first working integrated circuit on 12 September 1958, but his device used a germanium body with external gold-wire connections, so it was not a true monolithic chip. About six months later Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor developed the first practical monolithic chip in silicon, and modern integrated circuits are based on Noyce's design rather than Kilby's prototype.

Connections