Thursday 19 October, 2000
Jack Kilby: Pioneer Of The Modern Age
Electrical engineer Jack Kilby laid the foundations for modern information technology. In 1958 he helped to develop the world's first ever microchip. It was a simple device, but it would go on to revolutionise the world.
Having recently been awarded with the Nobel Prize for physics, BBC Science talked to Kilby about the background to his development and how one small chip changed the face of modern microelectronics.
The tyranny of numbers
In July 1958 Jack Kilby was working for a small organisation called Texas Instruments. His colleagues were all away on their summer holidays, but Kilby worked on, determined to solve a problem. The puzzle that confronted had arisen from the developments of the transistor by the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Until Bell launched the transistor in 1947, the electronics industry had relied on vacuum tube technology. However, there were problems with this as it was fragile and bulky. The transistor broke the mould, by interconnecting hundreds of tiny components; Bell had developed a complex circuit board. However, whilst this solved the problems of vacuum technology it posed problems of its own. Each of the components had to be individually soldered onto the board, this was not only time consuming and unreliable, but also costly.
Kilby outlined the problem that faced electrical developers:
‘In the early ‘50s, people could begin to visualise electronic equipment. It was much more complex than anything that had been realised. And if those equipment’s had been built with existing technology, they would have been too big, too heavy, too expensive, and use too much power to be useful. That was collectively described as the tyranny of numbers. The number of parts that were required was just prohibitive.’
Monolithic integrated circuit
Back in 1958 Kilby struggled with the idea of how to automate the process of producing circuit boards. If Texas Instruments (TI) were to compete in the electronic market place they needed to develop a more cost-effective system.
Kilby explains how he began to experiment with the ideas of integrated circuits:
‘I began to think that the only thing that TI could make effectively was semiconductors and then I realised that semiconductors were really all that you needed. That you could make resistors, transistors, capacitors and diodes from the same material and if you could do that you could connect them all to form complete circuits.’
By September 1958 Kilby was ready to demonstrate his working, integrated circuit. A group of TI executives gathered in the semiconductor lab as Kilby produced a slice of germanium; fabricated within this semiconductor was a crudely constructed electronic circuit. This was the world’s first microchip.
| 'The crude circuit presented in the late 1950s paved the way for the technology that now shapes the modern world' | |
Putting the chip to work
It is hard to believe that when faced with one of the world’s greatest developments, the collected executives received the chip with levels of enthusiasm that Kilby describes as ‘somewhere between moderate and restrained.’ In fact the industry had reservations about the circuit and, as Kilby wrote at the time its merits, ‘provided much of the entertainment at major technical meetings over the next few years.’
When the objections began to fade, the first practical application for the chip came in 1962 when the US air force required a guidance computer for the Minuteman Missile. This project provided Kilby with way to demonstrate to the world exactly what the circuit could do. He explains:
‘[The Minuteman Missile guidance computer] required a couple of thousand circuits. It established a reputation for extremely reliable quality and when they decided to adopt integrated circuits it had a major impact. Another programme, which had significant impact, was the Apollo Guidance Computer – the man to the moon thing. This was a much smaller computer and less sophisticated but again had a tremendous reliability requirement. Since both of these programmes, which required great reliability, had chosen integrated circuits, this gave a significant push forward.’
The success of the air force projects provided the impetus to take the development one step further. What was needed now was a product that people could see, hold and possibly even own themselves.
The result was the first ever hand-held pocket calculator, of which Kilby helped to develop:
‘We began work on that to expand the market for integrated circuits and it was very successful. But again that’s part of the cost-reduction story. The first calculators tended to sell for $400 or $500. Today, you can get a pretty good one for $4 or $5 and they’re almost throw away items.’
The modesty of the inventor
The work that Kilby was involved in over 40 years ago went on to revolutionise the technology industry. The crude circuit presented in the late 1950s paved the way for the technology that now shapes the modern world, a contribution that was recognised by Hermann Grimeiss of the Swedish Royal Academy. Speaking on the announcement of the Nobel Prize recipients, Grimeiss commented:
‘Through their inventions this year’s Nobel laureates laid a stable foundation for modern information technology. Without Kilby it would not be possible to build the personal computers we have today.’
Kilby however remains modest about his achievements. He comments:
‘There is a thought in the history of science that everything will happen eventually, anyway no matter what you do about it. I think individuals at least can accelerate that and can play a significant part in the form in which it comes about and certainly this group did exactly that. I don’t know whether it makes any sense to speculate on whether somebody would have invented a transistor in another ten or 20 years. The fact is that they did it, it was great, we could use it and I think that’s all you need to know.’ |
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| Billion Dollar Business |
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According to Texas Instruments:
‘Since 1961, the worldwide electronics market has grown from $29billion to nearly $957 billion.’ |
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| Life at a Glance |
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Name: Jack St.Clair Kilby
Born:
Jefferson City, Missouri, November 8, 1923
Education:
1947 - B.S. Electrical Engineer, University of Illinois
1950 - M.S. Electrical Engineer, University of Wisconsin
Work history:
1947-58 Centralab, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1958-70 Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, Texas
1970 Leave of absence from Texas Instruments; continued to serve Texas Instruments as part-time consultant
1978-84 Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering
Patents:
Currently holds over 60 US patents
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