Jack St. Clair Kilby was born on November 8, 1923, and passed away on June 20, 2005. He was an American electronics engineer who helped create the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments in 1958. Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor also contributed to this invention. For this achievement, Kilby shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Kilby was also a co-inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer. He held patents for these inventions and for seven other inventions.

Early life and education

Jack St. Clair Kilby was born on November 8, 1923, in Jefferson City, Missouri. His father owned and operated a small electric company that provided services to customers in rural western Kansas.

Kilby grew up and attended school in Great Bend, Kansas, where he graduated from Great Bend High School. Today, road signs at the entrances to the town honor his time there, and the Commons Area at Great Bend High School has been named The Jack Kilby Commons Area.

Kilby earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1947 and from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1950.

Invention of the integrated circuit

Kilby played an important role in inventing the integrated circuit. In 1958, when Kilby was a new engineer at Texas Instruments (TI), he did not have a summer vacation. He worked on a problem called the "tyranny of numbers." He concluded that making many circuit parts in one piece of semiconductor material could solve it. On September 12, he showed his results to his company's managers, including Mark Shepherd. He demonstrated a germanium piece connected to an oscilloscope. When he pressed a switch, the oscilloscope displayed a steady sine wave, proving his circuit worked. On February 6, 1959, the patent for the first integrated circuit, U.S. Patent 3,138,743, was filed. It showed different parts (transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.) on one material. Kilby is often credited as a co-inventor with Robert Noyce, who created a similar circuit a few months later.

Later career

Kilby helped develop military, industrial, and commercial uses of microchip technology. He led groups that created the first military system and the first computer using integrated circuits. He helped invent the handheld calculator with Jerry Merryman and James Van Tassel.

In 1970, Kilby took time off from Texas Instruments to work as an independent inventor. He studied the use of silicon technology to create electrical power from sunlight. From 1978 to 1984, he held the position of Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Kilby retired from Texas Instruments in 1983.

Death and legacy

Jack Kilby passed away from cancer on June 20, 2005, in Dallas, Texas, when he was 81 years old.

On December 14, 2005, Texas Instruments established the Historic TI Archives. The Kilby family gave his personal writings and photographs to Southern Methodist University (SMU). These items will be organized and kept at DeGolyer Library, SMU.

In 2008, the SMU School of Engineering, along with DeGolyer Library and the Library of Congress, held a year-long event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the digital age. This event honored Kilby’s Nobel Prize-winning invention of the integrated circuit. Events and displays explored how technology and engineers helped create the modern world. Kilby received an honorary doctorate of science from SMU and was a long-time supporter of SMU through the Kilby Foundation.

Commemoration

The Kilby Award Foundation was started in 1980 to honor him. In 1995, the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal was established.

The Kilby Labs, a research lab at Texas Instruments focused on silicon manufacturing and integrated circuit design, is named after him.

The Jack Kilby Computer Centre at the Merchiston Campus of Edinburgh Napier University in Edinburgh is also named after him.

A statue of Jack Kilby is located in Texas Instruments Plaza on the campus of The University of Texas at Dallas.

Barton Community College in Great Bend, Kansas, hosts an annual event called Jack Kilby STEM Day.

References bibliography

• Berlin, Leslie. The man behind the microchip: Robert Noyce and the invention of Silicon Valley. Published by Oxford University Press, US, in 2005. ISBN 0-19-516343-5
• Lécuyer, Christophe. Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970. Published by MIT Press in 2006. ISBN 0262122812
• Nobel lectures. Published by World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, in 2000.