When we think of computers, we think of "nerds" and "whiz kids". Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like. But the real initiators of the technology were scientists.
Jack Kilby was no nerd. He was nearing 40 when he invented the integrated circuit.
Funny thing about the invention of the integrated circuit, or IC. It was almost as if it was preordained, meant to be invented by some higher power.
At the same time that Jack Kilby was working away in his laboratory at Texas Instruments, another scientist, Robert Noyce was working on a similar project miles away.
Neither of the men was aware of the other, and yet they registered patents for the integrated circuit within months of each other.
Jack was the first with his germanium IC, for which he was awarded the National Medal of Science.
Jack did not appreciate the full significance of his invention at the time.
"What we didn't realise then was that the integrated circuit would reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of a million to one. Nothing had ever done that for anything before," he said later.
The development of the IC triggered an explosion of technology that has put personal computers in almost every office, home and school.
And not just computers. Mobile phones, television, radio, VCRs, microwave ovens, washing machines, cars, trucks, trains, in fact, almost everything electrical uses ICs in some way or other.
Jack Kilby did not invent the digital computer, but the means by which it could be built. If the IC had been available to Charles Babbage we would have had the computer in 1835.
In 1982, Jack, St Clair Kilby was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Washington, alongside Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and other great innovators.
Thanks Paul!