1958: New hire Jack Kilby shows his Texas Instruments colleagues
a little something he’s built. A very little something: a
working integrated circuit on a piece of semiconductor material.
The world will soon change. Electronics had relied on vacuum
tubes for half a century before Bell Labs invented the
transistor in 1947. Transistors were tinier, more reliable,
longer-lasting, cooler and more energy-efficient. But connecting
hundreds or thousands of them in a complex circuit required wire
and solder. That cost money, took time and created thousands of
ways for the circuit to fail. Texas Instruments, or TI to
insiders, was working on the U.S. Army Signal Corps’ Micro-
Module program when Kilby joined the firm in 1958. Micro-Modules
proposed to make all components the same size, so they could be
snapped together to create circuits without wire or solder. Most
of the company’s employees went on a two-week vacation in July,
but Kilby hadn’t earned any vacation time yet. He used his
solitude to good effect. “Furthe