TECHNOLOGY: Microchip Pioneer Dies at 81: "Over at TotalFark, we call this [sad]

DALLAS - Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit opened the way for the microchips that are the brains of today's computers, video games, DVD players and cell phones, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 81.



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In 1958, his first year working with Texas Instruments in Dallas, Kilby used borrowed equipment to build the first integrated circuit, in which all the components were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. He also co-invented the hand-held calculator.



Kilby's fingernail-size integrated circuit, a forerunner of the microchip used in today's computers, replaced the bulky and unreliable switches and tubes that had been used in the first computing devices.



He won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his work, which according to the Nobel citation 'has laid the foundation of modern information technology, particularly through their invention of rapid transistors, laser diodes and integrated circuits.'

Without Mr. Kilby's work, there would be no Suicide Girls . . . and a world without hot goth boobies on my computer is a world I don't even want to think about. So thank you, Mr. Kilby. May you rest in peace.



The full story, including some pretty cool thoughts from his friends and co-workers, is at Yahoo News,

(Written by: WilWheaton)

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(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)