At the time when Jack Kilby’s experiments resulted in the first integrated circuit that was about half the size of a paper clip, computers were about 50 feet long, weighed eight tons, and used more than 5,000 vacuum tubes. The internal storage capacity of the UNIVAC, one of a handful of mainframes available in 1958, totaled 1,000 words or 12,000 characters. It’s easy to see how Kilby’s invention, which laid the groundwork for the modern microprocessor, was extraordinary. Another important piece of his legacy was the fact that Kilby and his employer, Texas Instruments, were able to settle a patent dispute with Robert Noyce, who later went on to co-found Intel. Noyce filed a patent for a silicon-based integrated circuit only a few months after Kilby and TI filed for their integrated circuit patent. The legal agreement reached between TI and Fairchild Semiconductor, Noyce’s employer at the time, allowed the companies to cross-license their technologies, which let the semiconductor industry thrive. In 2000, Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit, according to TI. Kilby died this week in Dallas at the age of 81. Technology Industry