Voting Station

Jack Kilby

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Inventor

The Resume

    (November 8, 1923-June 20, 2005)
    Born in Jefferson City, Missouri
    Electrical engineer at Texas Instruments
    With Robert Noyce, invented the integrated circuit, aka the microchip (1958)
    Also invented the pocket calculator and thermal printer
    Granted 60 patents
    Awarded the National Medal of Science (1969)
    Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (1982)
    Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2000)

Why he might be annoying:

    He failed the entrance exam for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1941).
    Texas Instruments and Noyce's Fairchild Semiconductor fought a decade-long battle over who had invented the integrated circuit.
    The courts ultimately sided with Noyce (1969), although by that time the two companies had agreed to cross-license their patents.
    The first calculator that he designed using integrated circuits required so many that it was too expensive to market and was used only for demonstrations (1967).
    His first calculator with micropchips to go on sale to the public, the Pocketronic (1970), cost $385 and could only perform the basic functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He served with the US Army Signal Corps and the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.
    He came up with the design for the integrated circuit only two months after joining Texas Instruments.
    He noted, 'I was the ignorant freshman in the field. I didn't know what everybody else considered impossible, so I didn't rule anything out.'
    Although their companies were busy suing each other, he and Noyce remained on friendly terms, with Kilby expressing his reget that Noyce had died before the Nobel Prize committee decided the integrated circuit was worthy of honor.
    When Texas Instruments started publicizing the integrated circuit as 'the chip that Jack built,' he dismissed the campaign as 'standard corporate baloney.'
    His explanation of the difference between a scientist and an engineer: 'Scientists get the theories, but engineers make them work.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 18 Votes: 5.56% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 14 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 24 Votes: 54.17% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 15 Votes: 53.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 135 Votes: 57.04% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying