Integrated Circuit Is 50 Years Old Today

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."

Comments

What did our birthday boy do?

[Ethanol-fueled]

According to this, the IC is a phase shift oscillator which cranked out a 1.3 MHz signal upon application of power.

Re:One understatement, comming up!!

[moderatorrater]

Yeah, but they fail to account for the fact that correlation != causation. Technology's been moving along at a fairly rapid pace since the 1800s; perhaps it's just a coincidence that integrated circuits came along around the same time electronics started taking off.

Uh oh

[Bearpaw]

From TFA:

As a new recruit at Texus Instruments he wasnâ(TM)t able to take a two-week leave while his other colleagues were off sunning themselves. Instead, he confined himself to his lab alone where he came up with the idea of fabricating all of a circuitâ(TM)s components with a single block of the same material.

To commemorate Kilby's accomplishment and stimulate ingenuity, Texas Instruments will be canceling vacations for all of their employees.

Re:One understatement, comming up!!

[spazdor]

correlation != coincidence as well.

Other coincidences abound, such as the fact that human flight became viable around the same time as the advent of the aeroplane.

For a laugh and some histoorical perspective

[serviscope_minor]

For a laugh and some historical perspective, dig out the datasheet for a 555 timer. It's an ancient chip by any standards, but still extant. The designers were obviously rather proud of how many transistors this chip could replace (something like 25), and the datasheet is clearly bragging about this. In a modern context, this is pretty funny. Of course, designing a chip with that kind of lifespan is braggable.

greatest invention

[chipace]

I was debating a coworker about the greatest invention of the 20th century, we both agreed that the miniskirt ranks higher than the transistor. It's interesting that they both came out around the same time.

ah, not quite

[Ancient_Hacker]

The TI invention was not what we would consider an "IC". It had components, but it wasnt practical to mass produce. Not even TI followed up on its development.

The real practical IC, with photoetched traces on a planar silicon substrate was developed by Fairchild.

The patentless 555

[2phar]

Here's an interview with Hans Camenzind, the said desinger of the 555. I thought this part was interesting:

There are no patents on the 555. Signetics did not want to apply for a patent. You see, the situation with patents in Silicon Valley in 1970 was entirely different than it is now. Everybody was stealing from everybody else. I designed the 555 Signetics produced it, and six months, or before a year later, National had it, Fairchild had it, and nobody paid any attention to patents. The people at Signetics told me they didn't want to apply for a patent, because what would happen if they tried to enforce that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say "These are our patents, now let's see what you're violating". It was a house of cards - if you blew on it, the whole thing collapsed.