

Behold the raw, elemental beauty of the world's first monolithic Integrated Circuit - smanek
http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/augarten/i6.htm

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ajross
I count two transistors. Does that really count as an integrated circuit? I've
always viewed the definition of an IC as a manufactured object, this is
clearly hand-built.

~~~
smanek
Noyce (of Intel fame) thought the same thing.

See [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/22/MNGJ7DC98L1.DTL) for more details.

The relevant paragraph: "Robert N. Noyce, co-founder of chip giant Intel
Corp., is credited with developing the manufacturing process that made
economical the wide-scale production of integrated circuits. Kilby and Noyce
bickered for years over the other's claim to have invented the integrated
circuit. Ultimately, the two agreed to share credit. In 1995, Kilby was
awarded the Robert N. Noyce Award, the Semiconductor Industry Association's
highest honor. When Kilby won the Nobel Prize, he invited Intel's other
founder, Gordon Moore, to the ceremony as a gesture to the contribution of
Noyce, who died in 1990. Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously."

But, technically, Kilby's chip counts because it _was_ a circuit on a
semiconductor substrate. It just looks odd because that image is blown up
considerably, the real size is 0.040 x 0.062 inches. A modern IC would look
substantially similar under a high enough magnification.

~~~
ajross
Actually, modern ICs are surprisingly regular and clean looking. My wife is a
semiconductor process engineer and I occasionally get to peek at the electron
microscopy images over her shoulder. She isn't allowed to tell me what they
are, but I can read the distance scale, and these are transistor-sized
features. And they have square corners and straight lines. It's pretty amazing
stuff.

But yeah, if this thing wasn't produced by photolithography, it's sort of a
evolutionary dead end. Whatever the semantics of what qualifies for an IC,
this really isn't a meaningful predecessor of a modern chip.

