What Happened on March 24th

Texas Instruments demonstrates the first integrated circuit. Its inventor, Jack Kilby (b. Nov 8, 1923), created the device to prove that resistors and capacitors could exist on the same piece of semiconductor material. His circuit consisted of a sliver of germanium with five components linked by wires. It was Fairchild's Robert Noyce, however, who filed for a patent within months of Kilby and who made the IC a commercially-viable technology. Both men are credited as co-inventors of the IC.