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Kilby says he is astounded by what his invention has done.

"What we didn't realize then was that the integrated circuit would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million to one," Kilby said.

"Nothing had ever done that for anything before," he said.

Doing things that no one had done before seems to come naturally to Kilby, because years after inventing the integrated circuit he went on to co-invent the portable calculator.

His original chip had only a single transistor, and was about the size of a small finger. Today, a chip smaller than a dime can hold 2 million transistors. And a thumbnail-sized area on a chip wafer can hold 125 million transistors.

Asked if there is anything he regrets about the technology that has driven space exploration, revolutionized military weaponry and spawned millions of consumer products, Kilby says there is one regret that springs to mind.

Electronic greeting cards that deliver annoying messages.

Correspondent Charles Zewe contributed to this report.

Appendix XIII

Robert Noyce

Robert Noyce was with FairChild. While he was in FairChild in 1959 , he invented Planar Integrated Circuits almost simultaneously with Jack Kilby of Texas Instrument. Eventually he left FairChild and along with Gordon Moore established INTEL which was eventually joined by Andy Grove. INTEL went on to capture 80% of microprocessor market. Robert Noyce is credited along with Jack Kilby for the invention of Integrated Circuits but since he died in 90’s he could not share the Nobel Prize with Jack Kilby. Nobel Prize is not given posthumously.

APPENDIX(XIV)

Wave Equation and Plane Propogating Waves.

A short chronology of related events.

Galileo (1564-1642) invented telescope, used it to study the celestial bodies and established Heliocentric World View as propounded by Copernicus quite contrary to Geocentric World View held sacred by Ptolemaic adherents and by the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo was excommunicated and put under house arrest for life. Only recently in 1980’s excommunication was lifted and Galileo was accepted as a good Christian.

Newton(1642-1727) wrote the Principia, discovered light dispersion by prism and gave the theory of the corpuscular nature of light.

Euler, Young, Fresnel&Foucalt (1819-1868) they all established the wave nature of light through interference and diffraction experiment.

James Clark Maxwell(1864) gave the celebrated four equations which unify Electric and Magnetic Fields.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz(1857-1894) verified the existence of long electro-magnetic waves. His transmitter was an oscullatory discharge across a spark gap(a form of oscillating electric dipole). For detecting the waves he used an open loop of wire with a brass knob on one end and a fine copper point on the other. A small spark visible between the two ends marked the detection of an incident electromagnetic waves. He focused it , he determined its polarizations, reflected and refracted it, caused interference and produced standing wave and measured its wavelength of the order of 1 m. After his experiment he wrote the following:

I have succeeded in producing distinct rays of electric force, and in carrying out with them the elementary experiments which are commonly performed with light and radiant heat……… We may perhaps further designate them as rays of light of very great wavelength. Theexperiments described appear to me , at any rate, eminently adated to remove any doubt as to the identity of light, radiant heat, and electromagnetic wave motion. [Reference: Optics, Eugene Hecht, Addison-Wesley, 1998, 3 rd edition].

Max Planck(1858-1947) was able to explain Black Body Radiation in 1900 by invoking the quantum nature of light though he himself was not comfortable with this new conceptualization.

Einstein(1879-1955)- In 1905 The Special Theory of Relativity was proposed which stated the guage invariance of the speed of light.

  1. In 1910 The Photo-Electric Effect was discovered
  2. In 1915 The General Theory of Relativity was proposed which predicted Gravitational Lensing Effect.

Michelson&Morley Experiment performed in 1887 which established the guage invariance of the speed of light.

Prince of France- de Broglie (1924) proposed duality theory and matter wave.

Davisson&Germer(1927)- electron diffraction by nickel foils.

Divergence D = ρ (Gauss’s Law)

Divergence B= 0 (No magnetic monopole)

Curl E = -∂B/∂t (Faraday’s Law and Lenz’s Law)

Curl H = ∂D/∂t (Displacement Current) + J(electronic current)

Appendix XV

Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (25 April 1874– 20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun , "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".

During his early years, Marconi had an interest in science and electricity . One of the scientific developments during this era came from Heinrich Hertz , who, beginning in 1888, demonstrated that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation —now generally known as "radio waves", at the time more commonly called "Hertzian waves" or "aetheric waves". Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries, and a renewed interest on the part of Marconi. He was permitted to briefly study the subject under Augusto Righi , a University of Bologna physicist and neighbor of Marconi who had done research on Hertz's work. Righi had a subscription to The Electrician where Oliver Lodge published detailed accounts of the apparatus used in his (Lodge's) public demonstrations of wireless telegraphy in 1894.

In 1914 Marconi was made a Senator in the Italian Senate and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK. During World War I , Italy joined the Allied side of the conflict, and Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio service. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Italian Army and of commander in the Italian Navy. In 1924, he was made a marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III .

Marconi joined the Italian Fascist party in 1923. In 1930, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him President of the Royal Academy of Italy , which made Marconi a member of the Fascist Grand Council .

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Source:  OpenStax, Solid state physics and devices-the harbinger of third wave of civilization. OpenStax CNX. Sep 15, 2014 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11170/1.89
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