Geoffrey Dummer, a British radar engineer, introduced the concept of an integrated circuit at the 1952 Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C.
Keep in mind, the world wasn't even thinking in this direction until he said, “With the advent of the transistor and the work in semiconductors generally, it seems now possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires. The block may consist of layers of insulating, conducting, rectifying and amplifying materials, the electronic functions being connected directly by cutting out areas of the various layers.” (From the Electronic Product News)
Dummer made his concept. It resembled a flip-flop in the form of a solid block of semi-conductor material suitably doped and shaped to form four transistors. Unfortunately, the British government shut off his funding. Dummer said, " “I have attributed it to war-weariness in one of my books, but that is perhaps an excuse. The plain fact is that nobody would take the risk. The Ministry wouldn’t place a contract because they hadn’t an application. The applications people wouldn’t say we want it because they had no experience with it. It was a chicken-and-egg situation."
But we have ICs today, how so? That is due to the concept moving to the United States and worked on by Jack Kilby, a Texas Instruments Engineer at the time.
Jack Kilby created his prototype in 1958. A simple transistor and some other miscellaneous components on a piece of germanium. His concept was to put all parts on a solid block of semiconductor material. This would eliminate cumbersome wire interconnects that Dummer tried to use.
Robert Noyce, a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, later solved the interconnect problem and shared the credit with Jack Kilby for creating the first IC.
Kilby patented the innovation. And in 2000 Kilby won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of the IC.
Dummer continued to be an important figure in design, components, applications, and electronics. He wrote a few books. Dummer made no claim to be the inventor of microelectronics. And after Robert Noyce solved the issues, Dummer started a campaign in research and development in, early, embedded technology.
Dummer died in September of 2002.
Thanks to these three men, we live in a better world.
Cabe
Picture is of Jack Kilby's prototype.
