At that point in time engineers could imagine and design electronics that could outperform anything previously designed However it was impossible to actually build them because the circuits which are the basic building blocks of computer processors would be too large and complex A circuit with 100 000 parts needed 1 million soldered connections to link them together The only way to make those connections was by hand so the labor and cost were unaffordable This was called the interconnections problem or the tyranny of numbers Unless someone found a solution to the problem further technological advancement seemed impossible Finding a Solution Countries such as the United Kingdom France the Soviet Union and Germany worked hard to come up with a solution to the interconnections problems In the United States the military and private companies poured money into solving the problem but none of the ideas worked JACK KILBY Jack Kilby was born in 1923 and became an electrical engineer In addition to developing the integrated circuit he coinvented the first electronic handheld calculator and held patents for 60 other inventions In 2000 he received the Nobel Prize for his work on the integrated circuit He died in 2005
14 LLLLLLLL Computers were changing in the 1950s but inventors were struggling to design a smaller and more affordable option Then one summer day in 1958 engineer and inventor Jack Kilby was working alone in his office at Texas Instruments in Dallas Texas He had only recently started his job and everyone else was on vacation so the office was empty Being alone in the office gave him plenty of time to think In fact Kilby was supposed to be working on a
different task but he started thinking about the interconnections problem He began sketching and making notes and he came up with the idea of putting all of the wires resistors and capacitors onto one chip to make a complete circuit He developed the integrated circuit Also called a chip the integrated circuit was made of semiconductor material and it was one half the size of a paper clip Although there were still some problems the idea was revolutionary No one previously had figured out how to eliminate all of the soldered connections required to make a circuit The integrated circuit solved the interconnections problem Physical materials can be categorized by how well they conduct electricity Conductors allow electricity to flow freely whereas insulators do not Semiconductors fall in the middle because they can conduct electricity or not depending on how they are stimulated They can be stimulated electrically thermally with heat or physically Common semiconductor materials are silicon and germanium At first germanium was the preferred material for computers because it was easier to work with than silicon However engineers realized silicon performed better and by the end of the 1950s silicon was the preferred material Another man Robert Noyce independently came up with his own idea for an integrated circuit a few months later The parts were connected better than they were on Kilby's circuit making it more appropriate for mass production As a result of both men's work smaller circuits could be made manufacturing could be automated and technologies 10
could advance faster and further Many of the electronics products we use today could not have been developed without the integrated circuit The history of the computer and its development is a story of many contributors building on previous work Also as with Jack Kilby Robert Noyce and the integrated circuit several important stages of development occurred in which people worked on similar ideas sometimes without realizing it until later ROBERT NOYCE Robert Noyce is considered a coinventor of the integrated circuit The company he cofounded Fairchild Semiconductor applied for a patent for the circuit Jack Kilby's company had also applied but Fairchild received the patent Noyce later went on to cofound Intel Corporation one of the largest manufacturers of integrated circuits in the world Noyce was one of the first scientists to work in the area now called Silicon Valley and was nicknamed the Mayor of Silicon Valley He died in 1990 at age 62 Computers in Everyday Life The effect of the integrated circuit breakthrough has been far reaching Nowadays computers are small portable and a part of virtually every aspect of daily life But without the integrated circuit that would not have been possible Laptops and tablets have become the norm in offices schools and homes Watch a congested street crowded bus or busy coffee shop and the majority of people are likely using a handheld computer called smartphone a
