Jack Kilby (1923-2005)
When he co-invented the integrated circuit, or microchip, Jack Kilby also co-launched the era of modern electronics. He was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, and spent most of his childhood in Great Bend, Kansas. The son of an electrical engineer, Kilby failed his entrance exam to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was drafted into the army, expending most of his time trying to scale down the size of radio sets for jungle-warfare units. After demobilization, he was accepted to the University of Illinois. He graduated in 1947 and began work for Centralab in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, making components for television sets and hearing aids. He moved on to earn his master's degree in 1950 from the University of Wisconsin. At this time Kilby was also working at the Centralab Division of Globe-Union Corporation, where he cultivated ideas for manufacturing all pieces of an electrical circuit on a solitary base.
In 1958, he joined Texas Instruments in Dallas. During the summer of that year, operating with borrowed and makeshift equipment, he conceptualized and built the first electronic circuit in which all of the elements, both active and passive, were constructed in a single piece of semiconductor material one-half the size of a paper clip. The successful laboratory presentation of that first simple microchip on September 12, 1958, made history.
Jack Kilby went forward to innovate military, industrial, and commercial applications of microchip technology. He directed teams that constructed both the first military system and the first computer containing integrated circuits. He subsequently co-invented both the handheld calculator and the thermal printer that was utilized in portable data terminals.
In 1970, he took a leave from TI to operate as an independent inventor. He researched, among other matters, the use of silicon technology for yielding electrical power from sunlight. From 1978 to 1984, he held the position of Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University.
There are few men whose insights and professional achievements have transformed the world. Jack Kilby is thought by many as one of these men. His innovation of the monolithic integrated circuit - the microchip - some 50 years ago at Texas Instruments (TI) put down the theoretical and technical foundation for the entire field of modern microelectronics. It was this discovery that made achievable the advanced high-speed computers and large-capacity semiconductor memories of today's information age.
From Jack Kilby's first simple circuit has matured a global integrated circuit market whose sales in 2000 totaled $177 billion. Such is the might of one idea to change the world.
Jack Kilby is the recipient of two of the nation's most esteemed honors in science and engineering. In 1970, in a White House ceremony, he accepted the National Medal of Science. In 1982, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Mr. Kilby formally retired from TI in the 1980s and he passed away June 20, 2005, in Dallas following a brief battle with cancer.
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