RIP Jack Kilby

He may not be a household name but we all use what he invented and for which he received the Nobel Prize. From Yahoo/AP

Microchip Pioneer Jack Kilby Dies at 81
Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit ushered in the electronics age and made possible the microprocessor, has died after a battle with cancer.

Kilby died Monday at age 81, said Texas Instruments Inc., where he worked for many years.

Before the integrated circuit, electronic devices relied on bulky and fragile circuitry, including glass vacuum tubes. Afterward, electronics could become increasingly more complex, reliable and efficient: powering everything from the iPod to the Internet.

During his first year at Texas Instruments, using borrowed equipment, Kilby built the first integrated circuit into a single piece of semiconducting material half the size of a paper clip. Four years later in 1962, Texas Instruments won its first major integrated circuit contract, for the Minuteman missile.

Kilby later co-invented the hand-held electronic calculator.

"TI was the only company that agreed to let me work on electronic component miniaturization more or less full time, and it turned out to be a great fit," Kilby wrote in an autobiography for the Nobel Committee in 2000, the year he won the prize for physics.

The obituary goes on to talk about his history, his inventions and tells a little bit about his character, intelligence and modesty. One of the titans of technology -- right up there in the pantheon with Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Issac Newton.