Integrated Circuit

Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, USA, patents 3,138,743 and 2,981,877, granted 1964 and 1961. Circuits on one chip.

Overview

Kilby built germanium circuits at TI in 1958; Noyce's Fairchild planar process made silicon manufacturable and interconnected. Their companies cross-licensed the dueling patents, and both men are honored as co-inventors, sharing the 2000 Nobel-era honors until Kilby's Nobel alone in physics, Noyce having died in 1990. The chip replaced wire-wrapped assemblies, enabling Apollo's guidance computer and Moore's law. TI and Fairchild seeded Silicon Valley's genealogy. Every processor is a descendant of these filings.