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The integrated circuit, or microchip, puts transistors and other electronic parts together on one small piece of material such as silicon. Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments showed the first on 12 September 1958; Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor independently made a more practical version about six months later.

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Before the chip, every transistor, resistor and capacitor was a separate part that had to be wired to the others by hand, so complex circuits grew huge and unreliable. Kilby's first chip was a sliver of germanium joined up with fine gold wires; when he switched it on, an oscilloscope, an instrument that draws electrical signals on a screen, showed a steady wave, proof that it worked. Noyce's chip was made of silicon and used the planar process devised by his colleague Jean Hoerni, in which the parts and the connections between them are built up in thin, flat layers. That made chips easy to mass-produce, and almost all chips are still made on the same principle. Noyce co-founded Intel in 1968 and died in 1990; Nobel Prizes are not awarded after death, and in 2000 Kilby received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention.

Türkçe oku
Mikroçip, yani tümleşik devre, transistörleri ve öteki elektronik parçaları silisyum gibi bir malzemeden küçük tek bir parça üzerinde toplar. İlkini Texas Instruments'tan Jack Kilby 12 Eylül 1958'de gösterdi; Fairchild Semiconductor'dan Robert Noyce da ondan habersiz, yaklaşık altı ay sonra daha kullanışlı bir çip geliştirdi.

Çipten önce her transistör, direnç ve kondansatör ayrı bir parçaydı ve bunların birbirine elle bağlanması gerekiyordu; bu yüzden karmaşık devreler dev boyutlara ulaşıyor, sık sık arıza veriyordu. Kilby'nin ilk çipi, ince altın tellerle birbirine bağlanmış bir germanyum parçasıydı. Kilby devreye akım verdiğinde, elektrik sinyallerini ekranda çizen osiloskopta düzgün bir dalga belirdi: Çip çalışıyordu. Noyce'un çipi ise silisyumdan yapılmıştı ve iş arkadaşı Jean Hoerni'nin geliştirdiği düzlemsel yöntemi kullanıyordu. Bu yöntemde parçalar ve aralarındaki bağlantılar ince, düz katmanlar hâlinde üst üste oluşturulur. Böylece çipler kolayca seri üretilebildi; bugün de neredeyse bütün çipler aynı ilkeyle yapılıyor. Noyce 1968'de Intel'in kurucuları arasında yer aldı ve 1990'da öldü. Nobel Ödülü ölmüş kişilere verilmez; Kilby ise buluştaki payı nedeniyle 2000'de Nobel Fizik Ödülü'nü aldı.

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