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Integrated Circuit Is 50 Years Old Today

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the looks-pretty-to-me dept.

arcticstoat writes "Today marks fifty years since the first integrated circuit, or microchip, was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments on 12 September 1958. The original chip might not be much to look at, but then Texas Instruments admits that Kilby often remarked that if he'd known he'd be showing the first working integrated circuit for the next 40-plus years, he would've 'prettied it up a little.' The integrated circuit itself was housed in a germanium strip on a glass slide, and it measured 7/16in by 1/16in. With protruding wires, and just containing a single transistor, some resistors and a capacitor, it's a primitive chip by today's standards, but it worked and successfully produced a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen at the demo. Technology hasn't been the same since."

8 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. One understatement, comming up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Technology hasn't been the same since.

    Naw, ya think?

    1. Re:One understatement, comming up!! by RobKow · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're right. Correlation isn't causation. But correlation is nevertheless good EVIDENCE of causation. I'm sick and tired of people parroting "correlation is not causation" every time a correlation is used as evidence for causation.

    2. Re:One understatement, comming up!! by cens0r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And electronics would have really taken off with lots of vacuum tubes.

      --
      Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
    3. Re:One understatement, comming up!! by slackergod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed!

      I'd add that correlation usually implies that there is some common cause which is a necessary condition of all the correlated events, even if it is not sufficient to cause all of them by itself.

      People frequently loose sight of the fact that all "correlation != causation" is meant to indicate is that the common cause of correlated events is not required to be one the events themselves, but can be some other external event.

      Whether the cause is bias in the measurement, direct/indirect causation, some remotely connected common causation, or whatever.. Correlation hardly _ever_ is simply coincidence.

    4. Re:One understatement, comming up!! by moderatorrater · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First of all, it was a joke, come on people.

      Secondly, correlation is pretty bad evidence of causation without something else backing it up. Correlations happen all the time for many reasons. There are many orders of magnitude more good correlations than there are causal relationships.

    5. Re:One understatement, comming up!! by moderatorrater · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How about an analysis of those variables that have to be taken into account? That's a good way to back up a correlation that isn't in and of itself another correlation. There's experimentation. That's useful. Logic works too. In the case of IC, we can directly trace the history of electronics and determine that IC played a very large part in it.

      Correlations can be used as supporting evidence, but they're weak to the point of ridicule by themselves. I can't believe this is even an argument on a forum of educated people. The scientific method, at its core, is a method used to remove the uncertainty from correlations in the data so that you can say with confidence that either the correlation in the data is a cause and effect relationship or that the experiment was set up improperly. Perhaps, instead of bitching about correlation not being accepted as evidence of causation, you should praise people for having the skepticism that's driven the scientific revolution of the past few centuries.

  2. Roswell by id09542 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wow, we have come so far since the discovery in Roswell!!!!!!

  3. Re:Microchip - aargh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If that's a microchip, a regular full sized chip must be about 8 foot long

    I like SI too, but it isn't the be-all end-all of word formation. "Micro" is just the Greek word for "small" - it doesn't have to mean "exactly one millionth the size of a regular ...".

    A "microscope" doesn't have to magnify things exactly one million times (most only do 10-400 fold), nor does it need to allow you to see things one micrometer in size (although some can). Likewise "microeconomics" doesn't imply that it deals with things exactly one millionth the size of "regular" economics.

    So microchip doesn't mean "something exactly one millionth the size of a regular chip", nor should it have to. It's "micro" (that is small) compared to the non-integrated circuits which preceded it, and it's a "chip" (a small sliver) of semiconductor. It's a small chip ... a "microchip".