Contributors of Integrated Circuit Invention

Integrated Circuits: The What?

Integrated Circuits or as we know them today chips are widely used in almost every electronic and digital equipment. From space rockets to our smartphones, IC chips are present everywhere. The use and application of IC chips are so many in today’s time that without them the global growth may stop. We should be thankful to those people who contributed to the invention of integrated circuits. It should be noted that the focus is not on who invented Integrated circuit, but the focus should be on who contributed to its invention. Werner Jacobi, Geoffrey Dummer, Harwick Johnson, Sidney Darlington, Yasuo Tarui, Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce, Jean Hoerni, Kurt Lehovec, Mohamed Atalla, and others.
You might think that how can so many people contribute to invention of one thing. But it should be understood that the process of developing Integrated circuits was quite complicated, and every person in the above-given paragraph contributed in one way or another. The contribution of each and every person was valuable.



Contribution of Various People in the invention of Integrated Circuits:

As we mentioned above, various people contributed from their side in the invention of an integrated circuit. We will discuss above some of the contributors of Integrated Circuit and their contribution about the same:

Werner Jacobi was a German physicist and engineer. He was the first person to came across the idea of integration of electric circuits in one single device. That single device was called transistor and Werner Jacobi filled for the patent of integrated transistor amplifier in 1949.

Geoffrey Dummer was a British radio engineer who proposed to integrate a variety of electronic components into one monolithic semiconductor crystal in 1952.

Sidney Darlington and Yasuo Tarui proposed similar design between 1953-57, but their design did not have electrical isolation between various components.

In 1958, Jack Kilby of Texas Instrument patented the principle of integration, created the first prototype IC and commercialized it. The IC developed by him was hybrid instead of Monolithic.

Kurt Lehovec was the first person to successfully isolate electrical components on a semiconductor crystal.

Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor was the first person to successfully invent monolithic chip. He even improved the insulation process by using planar technology proposed by Jean Hoerni.

Thus, as you can see many people contributed to the invention of integrated circuits. Because of the contribution of so many people, Integrated Circuits improved from time to time.

The fight over patent of IC:

A patent war was initiated by Texas Instruments who held the patent of Jack Kilby’s invention against Fairchild conductor, but it was later resolved by agreeing on cross-licensing.

Who really invented Integrated Circuit?

Jack Kilby received Nobel Prize of physics for inventing Integrated Circuit in 2000. But he is not considered as the sole inventor of IC in the science world. American Press in 1960’s announced Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce, Kurt Lehovec, Jean Hoerni as the four people who invented Integrated Circuit. This list was shortened to Kilby and Noyce in 70’s.  It really doesn’t matter who invented the Integrated circuit or who got the Nobel Prize for it. The important thing is all of these people and many others transformed the world by inventing integrated circuits. This world is a better place because of them.

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