Tech Story #4: The first chip — Jack Kilby, 1958
The first integrated circuit (Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments, 1958; Robert Noyce, silicon, 1959).
Who made the very first computer chip? 💾 A true story 👇
1️⃣ SUMMER 1958: Jack Kilby had just joined Texas Instruments in Dallas. He was too new to take the summer holiday, so he worked almost alone in the lab — and had a big idea: make ALL the parts of a circuit from one piece of material.
2️⃣ 12 SEPTEMBER 1958: he showed it. One tiny piece of germanium (about 11 mm long) with a transistor, resistors and a capacitor, joined with fine gold wires. Switched on: a clean wave on the oscilloscope. It worked! The first integrated circuit.
3️⃣ 1959: Robert Noyce at Fairchild made it flat, in silicon, with the wires printed on top — a chip that could be made by the millions. Today one phone chip holds billions of transistors.
Kilby won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for it.
Read the voiceover (transcript)
- Who made the very first chip?
- Summer, nineteen fifty-eight: Jack Kilby, new at Texas Instruments, works alone in the lab.
- He builds a whole circuit on one tiny piece of germanium, joined with gold wires. It works!
- In nineteen fifty-nine, Robert Noyce makes it flat, in silicon. Today: billions on one chip!
- One tiny chip, a Nobel Prize!
- Next story: the blue LED! Follow for more!
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