Circuit behind the Internet Age turns 50 years old

AFP ^ | September 13, 2008 11:15 PM PDT | AFP

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — The computer chip industry on Friday celebrated the 50th birthday of the integrated circuit, a breakthrough that set the stage for the Internet and the Digital Age.

A half-century ago a young engineer named Jack Kilby first demonstrated an integrated circuit he designed while working through the summer at his Texas Instruments job because he didn't have enough vacation time for a holiday.

Kilby used a sliver of conductive germanium to connect a transistor and other bits, dubbing the soldered assembly an "integrated circuit" (IC).

Engineer Robert Noyce was designing his own IC "in parallel" at Fairchild Semiconductor but didn't debut his creation until about six months later. Noyce went on to found US chip making giant Intel in 1968.

While Kilby was the first to demonstrate an IC, Noyce came up with a design that could be mass produced, according to Leslie Berlin, project historian for Stanford Silicon Valley Archives and author of a book about Noyce.

"It was an idea whose time had come," Berlin told AFP. "There were efforts all over the world to make something like an integrated circuit."

History gives Noyce and Kilby shared credit for inventing the circuit that transformed the world of electronics.

"The IC was an idea so revolutionary, so life-changing, we don't even remember the world before it came along," Texas Instruments chief executive Rich Templeton said at a ceremony honoring Kilby.

"And we can't imagine life without it."

The year Kilby demonstrated his circuit, computers were colossal machines that filled rooms and were commanded by coded punch cards.

Televisions featured black-and-white pictures and few channels. The only telephones were wired in place. There were no iPods, flat-screen televisions, Internet searches or laptop computers.

Integrated circuits replaced vacuum tubes; bulky bulbs that guzzle electricity, spew heat and burn out.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From CNET:

TI launches Kilby Labs, marks 50 years of integrated circuits

***********************************EXCERPT*************************************

Texas Instruments commemorated the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit with the opening Friday of Kilby Labs, honoring Jack Kilby, the Nobel-prize-winning inventor of the seminal electronic device.

As a new TI employee in 1958, Kilby was forced to work during the traditional company summer vacation. During that time, he built the first integrated circuit, now the basic building block of everything from 3G cell phones to supercomputers.

The first IC was crude: a sliver of germanium with protruding wires glued to a glass slide (see image below). When Kilby applied electricity to the circuit, "an unending sine wave undulated across his oscilloscope screen. In that instant...he had successfully integrated all of the parts of an electronic circuit onto a single device made from the same semiconductor material," according to TI's Web site.

The first integrated circuit built by Jack Kilby(Credit: Texas Instruments)

Robert Noyce, who co-founded Intel, also created an integrated circuit, about six months after Kilby. At that time, Noyce was at Fairchild Semiconductor (which he also co-founded). Noyce's chip, made of silicon, overcame some practical problems that Kilby's germanium-based device did not.

Kilby won the inventor's "Triple Crown": the Nobel Prize in physics; the National Medal of Science; and the National Medal of Technology. He held more than 60 patents including one for the portable electronic calculator, which TI invented in 1967. He died in 2005 at the age of 81 after a battle with cancer.

Kilby was one of the co-inventors of the electronic calculator(Credit: Texas Instruments)

Kilby Labs will be located on TI's Dallas North Campus, where Kilby first designed the chip. The new facility will bring together university researchers and leading TI engineers to discover new ways to use the IC--"from creating new ways to make health care more mobile to harnessing new power sources to enabling more fuel-efficient vehicles," TI said.

TI has named Ajith Amerasekera as director of the labs. Amerasekera, who is a TI fellow, joined the company in 1991 and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics.

At TI's headquarters, the original lab where Kilby worked and made his discovery of the first integrated circuit has been re-created on-site.

TI has also made a donation toward Jack Kilby's memorial statue in his hometown of Great Bend, Kan.

[massgopguy]

74LS161 rules! No wait, it’s an endless timing loop!

[Sacajaweau]

So Gore did this when he was a little boy.

Truly amazing that Mr. Gore...The Bore.

[b4its2late]

Whew!

For a second there, I thought you were going to say that you had the circuit right next to you, and if you didn't receive $50 million, you'd pull the plug on our internet! Oh, wait. Only Algore can do that......

[ßuddaßudd]

IC said the blind man.

[antiRepublicrat]

I loved when he said he’d have “prettied it up a little” if he’d known it would be shown all over the place.

[blam]

"74LS161 rules! No wait, it’s an endless timing loop!"

I wish I had a penny for every one of those I made.

[ShadowAce]

[TiberiusClaudius]

Would be cool if someone could find a circuit diagram of the thing. I looked around a bit, but can’t.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The PDF downloadable from Fairchild :

Download 74LS161 datasheet from Fairchild Semiconductor

[Ignatz]

I wish I could personally thank them both for the 555 timer IC. I had more fun with that little chip!
Hmmm...and wasn’t there a 741 OpAmp?

[TiberiusClaudius]

Thanks, but I was curious about the original Kirby IC.

[Marine_Uncle]

When I think of all the SemiConductor houses that got into manufacturing IC, I start to feel a bit old. So many names no longer in existence. TI did OK for itself, and INTEL likewise.

[KosmicKitty]

1958

It was a very good year!

Some of us were even born in it.

Here's to you, Jack.

[Larry Lucido]

I was born in 1956.

In my day, we had to hand-chisel our e-mails and deliver them on foot in the snow. And you didn’t dare chisel “reply to all.” That took all day.

[KosmicKitty]

I remember getting a little kit, made out of plastic, from which you could build a real simulated binary computer - circa late 1960’s.

Imagine how long it took to program a browser of THAT! ;-)

(My first computer class in college used a teletype device - No MONITORS. And there were 4, count ‘em 4, for the whole school! You wouldn’t believe the lines that formed at the end of the semesters!)

[Cvengr]

Hey, that plastic computer was my first. I remember getting it out of the closet and a telegraph I had made out of varnished plywood, 14 Ga Wire, a 16d nail and a sharp strip of metal cut from a Prestone Antifreeze can, were all sitting on the top shelf, came falling down on my chin, leaving me with my ‘hi-tech’ scar I still have today.

Not to worry, we were able to stitch it up and use modern chemistry to clean the wound.

I soon started the neighborhood newspaper, then began speculating into mowing grass for institutional investors who owned utility rights of ways.

Then came the jazz group and movie productions, cartoon artistry and silk screen shirt endeavors.

Later we decided we would launch our own rocket into space, began studying calculus and found a paint that would resist the high temperatures of our endeavor.

Something else always seemed to come along and pre-empt our enterprises.

[dayglored]

> Thanks, but I was curious about the original Kirby IC.

I believe it was a single-transistor sinewave oscillator, with a couple resistors and capacitors; probably a Wein-bridge, twin-T, or RC phase-shift design.

This isn't the Kirby schematic, but probably one of the references here can get you to it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RC_oscillator

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ROFL!