Jack Kilby

You know, when there is a technological frontier and a ton of money and lots of smart people working, one of the great things about competition and the world is lots of people are right at the edge thinking similar thoughts.

So as Noyce is doing this, in fact, slightly earlier, a thousand miles away, another engineer, a guy named Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments is also

inventing the chip.

Texas Instruments, famous for their calculators.

But the next breakthrough was even more important.

You see, in 1958, this guy by the name of Jack Kilby, he developed an early integrated circuit using Germanium Nagant.

1959 another guy by the name of Robert Noyce he developed a practical silicon version instead of connecting the separate transistors with individual wires engineers could now manufacture many electrical components together on one tiny piece of silicon the This became known as the microchip that we know today.

We talk about computer chips.

Well, I'm glad to have you here because, well, first off, Texas Instruments has a history in this industry as old as the industry.

I mean, Jack Kilby and the rest, as it were.

The fact that TI is leaning into data centers as well, only shows the mainstream importance of it, in my opinion, to have a player like TI involved.

Now, when we think of data centers, though, I mean, it is quite a big picture.

And then also then eventually they gave me tech because there's people leaving the newspaper and they needed somebody to cover it.

So one of the fun stories I got to do there was to interview Jack Kilby, who was... essentially the co-inventor of the original semiconductor chip that Texas Instruments made in competition with Fairchild and later Intel.

It was fun to interview Kilby

about that and all of the

Noyce was not working in isolation from the wider race to integrate electronic components.

At Texas Instruments, engineer Jack Kilby had independently developed an integrated circuit using a different material and approach.

Kilby demonstrated his circuit in 1958 before Noyce filed his patent application in 1959.

The two men's work was distinct, and both are recognized for their contributions to the invention.

He was a technical pioneer who was also trusted as a colleague, executive, and advocate for the wider industry.

The integrated circuit was not the work of one person alone.

Jack Kilby's independent invention, Jean Hoerni's planar process, Jay Last's development work, and the contributions of many Fairchild engineers all belong to its history.

Noyce's distinctive contribution was to see how a silicon circuit could be built in a form suited to manufacturing, with components and connections on one chip.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project success in 1945 quickly became civilian nuclear power.

Jack Kirby and Robert Noyce developed the integrated circuit in the late 50s, ushering America into the Silicon Age.

Throughout the 1960s, NASA and the space race drew our eyes to the heavens and our soul upward as scientists and engineers worked miracles to put Apollo 11 on the moon.

And throughout the 1970s, ARPANET was advancing and evolving, weaving the unspooled threads of new information into an ever-expanding web.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project success in nineteen forty-five quickly became civilian nuclear power.

Jack Kirby and Robert Noyce developed the integrated circuit in the late fifties, ushering America into the silicon age.

Throughout the nineteen sixties, NASA and the space race drew our eyes to the heavens and our soul upward as scientists and engineers worked miracles to put Apollo eleven on the moon.

And throughout the nineteen seventies, ARPANET was advancing and evolving, weaving the unspooled threads of new information into an ever-expanding web.