Microchip Pioneer Jack Kilby Dies

Inventor And Nobel Prize Winner Lost Cancer Battle; He Was 81

(AP) 
Kilby also co-invented the hand-held calculator.

Sales of integrated circuits totaled $179 billion in 2004, supporting a global electronics market of more than $1.1 trillion, according to TI.

Kilby's more than 60 U.S. patents included one filed in 1959 for an integrated circuit made of the element germanium. A few years later, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor received a patent for a similar but more complex circuit made of silicon. Noyce later co-founded Intel Corp., whose chips are used in many of today's computers.

After winning the Nobel, Kilby said of his invention: "I thought it would be important for electronics as we knew it then, but I didn't understand how much it would permit the field to expand."

He said he never craved fame or wealth.

"I think it just happened," Kilby said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. "It wasn't deliberate. I didn't say 'Inventors are nice and I want to be one.' I just think if you work on interesting projects, invention is kind of a natural consequence."

He received the National Medal of Science in 1970, and in 1982 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Kilby spent his later years as a consultant to TI, working on industry and government assignments throughout the world.

Kilby is survived by two daughters, five granddaughters, and a son-in-law.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.