Jack St. Clair Kilby Credit: invent.org

Mr. Kilby's invention of the microchip 30 years ago at Texas Instruments has become one of the top inventions of the century.

Mr. Kilby received B.S. and a M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois and Wisconsin respectively.

Kilby's Note Credit: invent.org

In 1958, he joined Texas Instruments in Dallas. Working with simple equipment, he conceived and built the first electronic circuit in which all of the components, both active and passive, were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of paper clip. The successful laboratory demonstration of that simple microchip on September 12, 1958, made history.  Jack Kilby worked with the military, industrial, and commercial applications of microchip technology. He was in charge of teams that built both the first military system and the first computer incorporating integrated circuits. He later co-invented both a hand-held calculator and the thermal printer that was used in portable data terminals.

The simple circuit has grown a worldwide integrated circuit market. The sale of the chip has become one of the fastest growing and money making inventions.

Jack St. Clair Kilby Credit: invent.org

Most integrated circuits are small pieces, or "chips," of silicon. Photolithography enables the designer to create tens of thousands of transistors on a single chip by proper placement of the many n-type and p-type regions. These are interconnected with very small conducting paths during fabrication to produce complex special-purpose circuits. Many of the most sophisticated equipment today use chips.