Jack Kilby, inventor of Integrated Circuit, dies

[radiazone]

Jack Kilby, inventor of Integrated Circuit, dies

By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, the basis of the computer chip revolution and foundation of what is now a trillion-dollar industry, died of cancer on Monday.

Kilby, 81, made the discovery 47 years ago, when, as a recently hired engineer at Texas Instruments Inc., he was left to work alone in a laboratory while most of his 7,500 colleagues were taking a company-wide summer vacation leave.

As a new hire, Kilby did not qualify to take a vacation in August 1958.

"It was a very quiet time and he got a lot done," said Pat Weber, 65, a long-time colleague and friend of Kilby's, who retired as vice chairman of Dallas-based Texas Instruments in 1998. The company announced his death on Tuesday.

Kilby, a seminal 20th-century inventor whom many place in the same league as Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for his work.

By hand-wiring together multiple transistors, Kilby's invention -- about half the size of a paper clip -- spawned a revolution in miniaturization in which millions of circuits are now housed on tiny pieces of silicon used in devices from computers to elevators to pacemakers.

Working in parallel at pioneering Silicon Valley company Fairchild Semiconductor, Kilby's rival Bob Noyce sketched out his own ideas for an integrated circuit in an engineering notebook -- then forgot about it, according to a new biography of Noyce's life.

Kilby, on the other hand, immediately recognized the value of his invention and built a working prototype in a matter of days, according to associates at Texas Instruments.

[Field Master]

Goodbye to the great mind whose ideas, insight and personal accomplishment changed the way we live in our time. His famous microchip invention laid the foundation for the entire field of modern microelectronics. This technological breakthrough paves the road for high speed computers and high capacity memories which are the backbone of today's information technology. Imagine a world without computer, cellphone, smart car, intelligent machines and other trivial automation? People that serves semiconductors industry will surely miss innovators like Jack.