Kilby was also the co-inventor of thehandheld calculator and thethermal printer, for which he had the patents. He also had patents for seven other inventions.[3]
Jack Kilby was born in 1923 in Jefferson City, Missouri, to Hubert and Vina Freitag Kilby. Both parents had Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Illinois. His father was a manager at a local utility company. Kilby grew up and attended school inGreat Bend, Kansas, graduating from theGreat Bend High School. Today road signs at the entrances to the town commemorate his time there, and the Commons Area at Great Bend High School has been namedThe Jack Kilby Commons Area.
Kilby was vital to theinvention of the integrated circuit. In mid-1958, as a newly employed engineer atTexas Instruments (TI), he did not yet have the right to a summer vacation. Kilby spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design that was commonly called the "tyranny of numbers", and he finally came to the conclusion that the manufacturing of circuit componentsen masse in a single piece ofsemiconductor material could provide a solution. On September 12, he presented his findings to company's management, which includedMark Shepherd. He showed them a piece ofgermanium with anoscilloscope attached, pressed a switch, and theoscilloscope showed a continuoussine wave, proving that hisintegrated circuit worked, and thus that he had solved the problem.[4] U.S. Patent 3,138,743 for "Miniaturized Electronic Circuits", the first integrated circuit, was filed on February 6, 1959.[5] It was notable for having different components (transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.) on one single substrate.[1]: 22 Along withRobert Noyce (who independently made a similar circuit a few months later), Kilby is generally credited as co-inventor of the integrated circuit.
Jack Kilby went on to pioneer military, industrial, and commercial applications of microchip technology. He headed teams that created the first military system and the first computer incorporating integrated circuits. He invented the handheld calculator (along withJerry Merryman andJames Van Tassel[6]).
In 1970, he took a leave of absence from TI to work as an independent inventor. He explored, among other subjects, the use of silicon technology for generating electrical power from sunlight. From 1978 to 1984, he held the position of Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering atTexas A&M University.
He died of cancer June 20, 2005, at the age of 81, inDallas, Texas.[7]
On December 14, 2005,Texas Instruments created the Historic TI Archives. The Jack Kilby family donated his personal manuscripts and his personal photograph collection toSouthern Methodist University (SMU). The collection will be cataloged and stored at DeGolyer Library, SMU.
In 2008, the SMU School of Engineering, with the DeGolyer Library and the Library of Congress, hosted a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of the digital age with Kilby's Nobel Prize-winning invention of the integrated circuit. Symposia and exhibits examined the many ways in which technology and engineers shaped the modern world. Kilby held an honorary doctorate of science from SMU and was a longtime associate of SMU through the Kilby Foundation.
In 1993, he was awarded theKyoto Prize by the Inamori Foundation. He was awarded both the Washington Award, administered by the Western Society of Engineers and theEta Kappa Nu Vladimir Karapetoff Award in 1999. In 2000, Kilby was awarded theNobel Prize in Physics for his breakthrough discovery, and delivered his personal view of the industry and its history in his acceptance speech.[19]
Berlin, LeslieThe man behind the microchip: Robert Noyce and the invention of Silicon Valley Publisher Oxford University Press US, 2005ISBN0-19-516343-5
Lécuyer, Christophe.Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 Published by MIT Press, 2006.ISBN0262122812
Nobel lectures, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 2000.
