On September 12th 2008 the integrated circuit or IC became 50 years old. “So what..?” You ask:

Well the integrated circuit has come a long way in only 50 years. When you think that the first IC, measuring about 3 X 21 mm odd, consisted of a single transistor and a few other components combined to make a Hartley oscillator which produced a sine-wave trace on an oscilloscope; then compare that with the processor in your computer which combines millions of transistors into complex circuitry; all built on a small piece of silicon and surrounded by a metal envelope, and you’ll see what I mean.

The first integrated circuit was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments on 12 September 1958.

The integrated circuit itself consists of a germanium strip, which you can see in the middle of the glass slide. It measured 7/16in by 1/16in.

In 1958 Texas Instruments was researching a new idea called the ‘micromodule,’ in which the components of a circuit all had the same size and shape, but still didn’t address the problems concerning high numbers of transistors.

In July 1958, Kilby confined himself to his lab alone where he came up with the idea of fabricating all of a circuit’s components with a single block of the same material.

Kilby went on to develop the first handheld electronic calculator at Texas Instruments in 1967, and collected a prestigious set of awards, including the Nobel Prize in physics, the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology.

Had the integrated circuit not been invented; our computers today would be absolutely massive boxes containing complex hand-soldered transistor circuitry, pouring out heat, using more natural resources, and costing a fortune. That dedicated pioneering scientist 50 years ago brought us out of the electronic dark-ages and greatly assisted technological evolution.