Tech History Made on February 6th, 1958

On this day in 1958 the first patent application for the integrated circuit is filed by Jack Kilby, engineer at Texas Instruments. The integrated circuit could by considered the grandfather of the silicon chip. It replaced the vacuum tube and individual transistors as it was cheaper to produce and more efficient. The age of all things miniature begins.

Kilby was not the first who thought of the integrated circuit, in 1952 Dummer,a radar scientist with the British Ministry of Defence, filed a patent but failed at producing a functioning model. Kilby was succesful with gemanium but at the same time Noyce, an engineer for Fairchild Semiconductor, was working with silicon. Noyce filed his patent after Kilby but was awarded the patent first due to care taken in his patent filing application. It is easy to see that both Kilby and Noyce helped usher in the information age.