Jack Kilby
Jack St. Clair Kilby was a notable
American electrical engineer who co-won the
Nobel Prize in
physics in 2000. He invented the
integrated circuit in 1958 while working at
Texas Instruments at about six months before
Robert Noyce made the same invention at
Fairchild Semiconductor.
Encyclopedia
Jack St. Clair Kilby was a notable
American electrical engineer who co-won the
Nobel Prize in
physics in 2000. He invented the
integrated circuit in 1958 while working at
Texas Instruments at about six months before
Robert Noyce made the same invention at
Fairchild Semiconductor.
Biography
Kilby's life all started Jefferson City,
Missouri. He spent much of his early life in
Great Bend,
Kansas and graduated from Great Bend
High School. Road signs at the entrances to the town commemorate his time there.
After failing to gain entry to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Kilby received his bachelor of science degree from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1947 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He obtained a master's degree from the
University of Wisconsin in 1950, while simultaneously working at Centralab in
Milwaukee.
In the summer of 1958, Kilby was a newly employed engineer at
Texas Instruments who did not yet have the right to a summer vacation. He spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design that was commonly called the "tyranny of numbers" and finally came to the conclusion that manufacturing the circuit components en masse in a single piece of
semiconductor material could provide a solution. On September 12 he presented his findings to the management of Texas Instruments: he showed them a piece of
germanium with an
oscilloscope attached, pressed a switch, and the
oscilloscope showed a continuous
sine wave, proving that his
integrated circuit worked and thus that he solved the problem. A
patent for a "Solid Circuit made of Germanium", the first integrated circuit, was filed on February 6, 1959. In addition to the integrated circuit, Kilby also is noted for patenting the electronic portable
calculator and the thermal printer used in data terminals. In total, he held about 60 patents.
From 1978 to 1985, he was Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at
Texas A&M University. In 1983, Kilby retired from Texas Instruments.
Kilby died June 20, 2005 when he was 81, in
Dallas, Texas following a brief battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Awards and honors
Kilby was awarded the
National Medal of Technology in 1990. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his breakthrough discovery. The Kilby Center, TI's research center for
silicon manufacturing, is named after him.The Jack Kilby Computer Centre at the Merchiston Campus of
Napier University in
Edinburgh is named in his honour.
Select patents
–
Miniaturized electronic circuit filed February 1959, issued June 1964
–
Integrated semiconductor circuit device –
Method of making miniaturized electronic circuits –
Capacitor for miniaturized electronic circuits or the like –
Miniature electronic calculator, first filing September 1967, issued June 1974, handheld battery operated electronic device with thermal printer
External links
- , biography by Texas Instruments.
- , The Washington Post .
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- , Autobiography in English
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