The integrated circuit is invented twice in a year
Two engineers at two companies solve the same wiring problem within months of each other
Quick facts
- First working demo
- Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments, September 1958
- Manufacturable version
- Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor, patent filed July 1959
- Kilby's recognition
- Shared 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics
- Key technique
- Jean Hoerni's planar process, used in Noyce's design
What happened
In September 1958 at Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working circuit with all its components, transistor, resistors, and capacitors, built from a single piece of semiconductor material rather than wired together from separate parts. A few months later, in January 1959, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor filed a patent for a different, more practical approach: components diffused directly into a silicon chip and connected by aluminum metal lines deposited on top, building on colleague Jean Hoerni's newly developed planar process. Noyce's design eliminated the fragile hand-wired connections Kilby's version still needed and could be mass-manufactured.
Why it matters
Kilby proved a single chip with multiple components was possible; Noyce's planar version made it manufacturable at scale, and that combination became the foundation of the entire semiconductor industry. Kilby shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention; Noyce, who died in 1990 and was ineligible, is separately credited by the patent record and by companies he later founded, including Intel.
How we know
Kilby describes his own 1958 work at Texas Instruments in his Nobel Prize autobiography; the Computer History Museum's Silicon Engine project documents Noyce's January 1959 patent filing and the planar process it built on.
Sources
- The Nobel Prize (Nobel Foundation). Jack S. Kilby: Biographical · Primary source (author-declared)nobelprize.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Computer History Museum (The Silicon Engine). 1959: Practical Monolithic Integrated Circuit Concept Patented · Reputable sourcecomputerhistory.org · The domain "computerhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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