[Some of] All The News That's Fit To Print

Photo by (Henrick Montomery/Pressens Bild)

No, this isn't your high school principal attending your 4th annual parole hearing. It's Jack S. Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit. Jack passed away 2005-06-20 at 81. We all know Henry Ford, inventor of the automobile. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb. We even know Ron Popeil, inventor of pocket fisherman and Veg-O-Matic. But we don't know Jack Kilby.

Martin Harvey: Why is that Captain Ron?
Captain Ron: Nobody knoowwss.

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From 2005-06-22 NY Times
The integrated circuit that Mr. Kilby designed shortly after arriving at Texas Instruments in 1958 served as the basis for modern microelectronics...

His achievement - the integration - yielded a thin chip of crystal connecting previously separate components like transistors, resistors and capacitors within a single device. For that creation, commonly called the microchip, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.

During his career at Texas Instruments he claimed more than 60 patents and was also one of the inventors of the hand-held calculator and the thermal printer. But it was Mr. Kilby's invention of the integrated circuit that most broadly shaped the electronic era.

"It's hard to find a place where the integrated circuit doesn't affect your life today," Richard K. Templeton, Texas Instruments' president and chief executive officer, said in an interview yesterday. "That's how broad its impact is."
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Thank you Mr. Kilby.