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Miniaturized Electronic Circuits
U.S. Patent 3,138,743 · 1964
From the abstract
This invention relates generally to miniaturized electronic circuits and more particularly to such circuits fabricated from a body of semiconductor material containing diffused impurities to form active and passive circuit elements within the body of semiconductor material itself.
Note
The integrated circuit. Kilby was a new TI engineer in the summer of 1958 who didn't yet have vacation accrued; while everyone else was off, he worked alone and built a working oscillator on a single sliver of germanium. Robert Noyce at Fairchild independently developed a more manufacturable silicon version six months later — the two are co-credited as IC inventors, though Kilby filed first. Kilby won the 2000 Nobel; Noyce had died in 1990 and Nobels are not awarded posthumously. Every modern computer is a direct descendant of this 7/8-inch-long sliver.