September 12, 1958

Integrated circuit

Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit at Texas Instruments

The first working IC was a rough sliver of germanium with tiny gold wires arching above it — not a modern-looking silicon chip.

12 September 1958: five components, one crystal

At Texas Instruments in Dallas on 12 September 1958, Jack Kilby demonstrated a working phase-shift oscillator whose transistor, resistor and capacitor elements were formed from one piece of germanium and connected with thin gold wires. The demonstrated circuit contained five components.

The test showed that active and passive circuit elements could be fabricated from the same semiconductor substrate and made to operate together as a complete circuit.

Proving a notebook idea

Kilby's supervisor, Willis Adcock, had been interested but skeptical of the monolithic-circuit proposal Kilby recorded on 24 July 1958, and asked him to prove that a circuit made from semiconductor elements could work.

Kilby recorded the successful demonstration on page 20 of his engineering notebook, signing and dating the entry 12 September 1958.

Kilby's prototype, Noyce's architecture

The prototype used external gold “flying wires” rather than the practical planar, on-chip interconnection system later proposed by Robert Noyce. The two men made distinct contributions: Kilby produced the first working integrated circuit, while Noyce's silicon planar design supplied a more manufacturable architecture.

Texas Instruments now had a functioning proof of concept, documented in Kilby's notebook, that became the basis for subsequent patent and development work; the patent application followed on 6 February 1959.

Sources

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