Microchip Pioneer Jack Kilby Dies

(AP)  In his first year working at Texas Instruments in 1958, Jack Kilby borrowed some equipment and created a fingernail-size device that would revolutionize the way the world communicates.

Kilby's 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.

"In my opinion, there are only a handful of people whose works have truly transformed the world and the way we live in it Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers and Jack Kilby," TI chairman Tom Engibous said in a statement Tuesday.

Kilby, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his work, died Monday after a battle with cancer, according to Texas Instruments, where Kilby worked for many years. He was 81.

The Nobel citation said Kilby's work "has laid the foundation of modern information technology, particularly through their invention of rapid transistors, laser diodes and integrated circuits."

Kilby's integrated circuit, in which all the components were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip, was a forerunner of the microchip used in today's computers. It replaced the bulky and unreliable switches and tubes that had been used in the first computing devices.

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