Computer History page 5
The fast, inexpensive, reliable, and space-saving transistors developed at Bell Labs were an instant hit. By the late 1950s, the transistor had almost completely replaced the vacuum tube in all manufactured electronic devices, including computers.
Although there was little, if any, disagreement over the relative merits of the transistor, the diminutive new switch still had its detractors. The chief complaints had to do with the miniscule size of the transistors. In order to create a transistorized circuit, workers had to hand-solder wires to hundreds or even thousands of tiny transistors, diodes, capacitors, resistors, and other electronic gizmos. The labor-intensive process was costly and problematic: manufacturing errors caused by worker fatigue were quite common.
Jack Kilby, working at Texas Instruments, had an idea. Why not create the entire circuit--transistor, wires, capacitors, resistors, and all--from one single sliver of semiconducting material? Kilby set to work on his all-in-one solution in July of 1958. By September of that same year, he had crafted a working model.
Working with a microscope and a half-inch wide chip of Germanium crystal, Kilby carefully carved a series of intricate electrical pathways into the semiconducting metalloid. Eventually, Kilby managed to etch a complete electronic circuit (consisting of one transistor, one capacitor, three resistors, and a series of interconnecting channels) directly into the chip itself.
Kilby's chip was dubbed the integrated circuit, and its sophistication grew rapidly. Advances in micromanufacturing allowed for the production of integrated circuits containing dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands of transistors--all in a space no larger than your thumbnail!
Computer makers were ecstatic. By eliminating the need to manually solder circuits together, the integrated circuit simplified computer manufacturing. And because integrated circuits were so much smaller than traditional transistorized circuits, Kilby's invention also allowed for a physical reduction in the size of the computer.
The U.S. Air Force was the first beneficiary of the integrated circuit. In 1961, the Air Force teamed up with Texas Instruments to develop a computerized guidance system small enough to fit in a jet. Thanks to the miniaturization made possible by Texas Instruments' integrated circuits, the Air Force computer was not only small (with a total volume of 6.3 cubic inches) and lightweight (tipping the scales at just under 10 ounces), but it could outperform transistor-based machines that were at least 150 times larger!
