Integrated Circuit Is 50 Years Old Today 117
arcticstoat writes "Today marks fifty years since the first integrated circuit, or microchip, was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments on 12 September 1958. The original chip might not be much to look at, but then Texas Instruments admits that Kilby often remarked that if he'd known he'd be showing the first working integrated circuit for the next 40-plus years, he would've 'prettied it up a little.' The integrated circuit itself was housed in a germanium strip on a glass slide, and it measured 7/16in by 1/16in. With protruding wires, and just containing a single transistor, some resistors and a capacitor, it's a primitive chip by today's standards, but it worked and successfully produced a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen at the demo. Technology hasn't been the same since."
What did our birthday boy do? (Score:5, Informative)
ah, not quite (Score:5, Informative)
The TI invention was not what we would consider an "IC". It had components, but it wasnt practical to mass produce. Not even TI followed up on its development.
The real practical IC, with photoetched traces on a planar silicon substrate was developed by Fairchild.
Re:The patentless 555 (Score:3, Informative)
Here's an interview [semiconductormuseum.com] with Hans Camenzind, the said desinger of the 555. I thought this part was interesting:
There are no patents on the 555. Signetics did not want to apply for a patent. You see, the situation with patents in Silicon Valley in 1970 was entirely different than it is now. Everybody was stealing from everybody else. I designed the 555 Signetics produced it, and six months, or before a year later, National had it, Fairchild had it, and nobody paid any attention to patents. The people at Signetics told me they didn't want to apply for a patent, because what would happen if they tried to enforce that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say "These are our patents, now let's see what you're violating". It was a house of cards - if you blew on it, the whole thing collapsed.
Actually, that sounds exactly like patents in Silicon Valley right now. Many software companies are gathering defensive patents to countersue with, just like that interview describes. Interesting to see that the practice dates back to early ICs.