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- Before the invention of the integrated circuit, scientists used the vacuum tube to create complex electrical circuits. Looking like giant light bulbs, vacuum tubes generated a lot of heat and tended to burn out, which was a frustrating problem for scientists trying to use them to make large circuits. The first digital computer, a behemoth named ENIAC, weighed over 30 tons and contained 18,000 vacuum tubes. Each time a vacuum tube burned out the computer would stop, making it extremely unreliable. When the transistor was invented in 1947, they quickly replaced the vacuum tubes as a means of creating complex circuits.
- Though undoubtedly smaller, more reliable and more effective, the transistor still had its limitations. It is important in any electrical circuit that all connections are intact; otherwise, the flow of electricity will be interrupted, causing the circuit not to work. As circuits became more complex, hand-soldered transistors and circuits were prone to manufacturing error, causing problems in larger machines because of the sheer number of connections required.
- The two men credited with inventing the integrated circuit are Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. Working independently of each other in 1958, both men conceived of a similar way of removing the problem of faulty wires and connections from complex circuits. Kilby, while working at Texas Instruments, discovered that building all the components of the circuit from the same block of semiconductor material and covering it with a single sheet of metal removed the need for individual connections. Elsewhere, approximately a year later, Noyce had the same idea--improving aspects of the design which had not been thought of by Kilby. Noyce found that initially covering the circuit with a sheet of metal before removing the unnecessary parts created effective connections between the components in the integrated circuit instead of having to solder wires.
- Integrated circuits have developed at an extremely rapid pace since Jack Kilby's prototype. Today's microchips contain several hundred million components on an area no bigger than a fingernail. The transistors which link the components together have been developed, as of May 2010, to be around 90 nanometers or 0.00009 millimeters in width--in other words, several thousand could fit on the cross-section of a single human hair. George Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel with Robert Noyce, said, "If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the [microchip] industry, a Rolls Royce would get a half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it."
- In 2000, Jack Kilby received the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the integrated circuit after leading the team which invented the hand-held calculator. Robert Noyce went on to become a co-founder of Intel, one of the largest manufacturers of integrated circuits in the world today.
Vacuum Tubes
Transistors
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce
Integrated Circuits Today
Recognition
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