[NJARC] [Fwd: [TCA] Microchip Pioneer Jack Kilby Dies at 81]

[Ray Chase]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [TCA] Microchip Pioneer Jack Kilby Dies at 81
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 20:37:10 -0400
From: " Ron Lawrence KC4YOY" <kc4yoy at carolina.rr.com>
Reply-To: tubecollectorsassociation at yahoogroups.com
To: "CC-AWA Reflector" <cc-awa at yahoogroups.com>, "TCA reflector" 
<tubecollectorsassociation at yahoogroups.com>



Microchip Pioneer Jack Kilby Dies at 81
06.21.2005, 06:42 PM

Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit
ushered in the electronics age and made possible the microprocessor, has
died after a battle with cancer.

Kilby died Monday at age 81, said Texas Instruments Inc., where he worked
for many years.

Before the integrated circuit, electronic devices relied on bulky and
fragile circuitry, including glass vacuum tubes. Afterward, electronics
could become increasingly more complex, reliable and efficient: powering
everything from the iPod to the Internet.

During his first year at Texas Instruments, using borrowed equipment, Kilby
built the first integrated circuit into a single piece of semiconducting
material half the size of a paper clip. Four years later in 1962, Texas
Instruments won its first major integrated circuit contract, for the
Minuteman missile.

Kilby later co-invented the hand-held electronic calculator.

"TI was the only company that agreed to let me work on electronic component
miniaturization more or less full time, and it turned out to be a great
fit," Kilby wrote in an autobiography for the Nobel Committee in 2000, the
year he won the prize for physics.

Today, integrated circuits are everywhere, from microwave ovens to Mars
landers.

The contributions of Kilby - who also co-invented the handheld calculator -
are hard to overstate, technology experts say.

His 2000 Nobel citation said Kilby "laid the foundation of modern
information technology."

"In my opinion, there are only a handful of people whose works have truly
transformed the world and the way we live in it - Henry Ford, Thomas Edison,
the Wright Brothers and Jack Kilby," TI chairman Tom Engibous said in a
statement Tuesday. "If there was ever a seminal invention that transformed
not only our industry but our world, it was Jack's invention of the first
integrated circuit."

Kilby's more than 60 U.S. patents included one filed in 1959 for an
integrated circuit made of the element germanium.

"It was kind of a string-and-chewing-gum gadget that just showed you could
use semiconductors to make all the bits and pieces. But it was far from
something that you could do on a practical basis," said Gordon Moore, who
co-founded Intel Corp. in 1968 with Robert Noyce.

In 1961, Noyce received a patent for a similar but more complex integrated
circuit made of silicon while at Fairchild Semiconductor.

"Kilby may have built the first one," Moore said. "Noyce's approach was how
to do it on a practical basis. They really complemented one another."

Moore, who worked with Kilby over the years, said he admired Kilby's
creativity, inventiveness and modesty.

"He was always coming up with creative ideas. I remember way back before
people considered it important, he was inventing a gadget that used silicon
to turn solar energy into hydrogen. It was kind of ahead of the problems we
are looking at now," Moore said.

After winning the Nobel, Kilby said of his invention, "I thought it would be
important for electronics as we knew it then, but I didn't understand how
much it would permit the field to expand."

In 1970, in a White House ceremony, he received the National Medal of
Science. In 1982, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Kilby spent his later years as a consultant to TI, working on industry and
government assignments throughout the world. A few years ago, Dallas-based
TI named a $154 million research and development complex in his honor.

Known by colleagues as a humble man of few words, the 6-foot-6 Kilby said he
never craved fame or wealth.

"I think it just happened," Kilby said in a 2000 interview with The
Associated Press. "It wasn't deliberate. I didn't say, `Inventors are nice
and I want to be one.' I just think if you work on interesting projects,
invention is kind of a natural consequence."

Jack St. Clair Kilby was born in 1923 in Great Bend, Kan. His father was the
owner of a small electric company, and Kilby became interested in radio
tubes while listening to big band radio in the 1940s.

He earned degrees in electrical engineering from the universities of
Illinois and Wisconsin, and began his career in 1947 with the Centralab
Division of Globe Union Inc. in Milwaukee, developing ceramic-based,
silk-screened circuits for electronic products.

Kilby is survived by two daughters, five granddaughters, and a son-in-law.