Invention Of Microchip

Valve computers had relatively little computing power, frequently burned out and each computer filled an entire room. When transistors replaced valves, computers became smaller and more reliable. Then Jack Kilby invented the microchip...

The microchip, like that other hugely significant invention the telephone, was being developed in two places simultaneously and, as with the telephone, being first to the patent office proved to be vitally important. Having trained as an electrical engineer and gained experience in miniaturization by working in the established field of radio and television parts manufacture, Jack Kilby (USA) moved to Texas Instruments (USA) in May 1958. His first job was to research ways of miniaturizing electronic components, and it was his unconventional thinking that brought about a complete revolution in computer engineering.

Standard practice was to make all the components of a circuit separately and then join them together as required. Instead of trying to miniaturize each individual component, Kilby began to wonder what would happen if they were all made from the same material, and then conceived the idea of using a semiconductor material to do so. (A semiconductor, such as silicon, can be made to behave either as a conductor or as an insulator, which means that it can perform various electronic functions.) Kilby used silvers of silicon to create a circuit in which all the components were integrated, and in August 1958 he demonstrated his invention to Texas Instruments. Kilby filed several patents for this integrated circuit, or microchip, on 6 February 1959.

Meanwhile, Robert Noyce (USA), and fellow scientists at Noyce's company Fairchild Semiconductor, had been developing a more robust and more easily mass-produced microchip known as a planar integrated circuits, for which they filed a patent on 30 July 1959. The Fairchild chip was the first to be produced commercially, for which reason Noyce is often named as co-inventor of the microchip, but Kilby was the first to patent his invention. After a lengthy legal battle, the US courts ruled that, although Fairchild had the rights to certain techniques, Jack Kilby's patent gave him precedence as the inventor of the microchip.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison