Person of the Week: Jack Kilby

June 24, 2005 — -- Jack Kilby was not a household name, but his work is a fixture in the American household. He was the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the computer chip.

Kilby died Monday at age 81, following a battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"The public sees the end product, but has very little idea how the product came into being, or who worked on it, and what kind of work had to be done to bring it about," Kilby told ABC News in a 1990 interview.

"You name a product -- it's there," said T.R. Reid, author of the book, "The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution." "The microchip is in computers, in calculators, in cell phones, in pacemakers, in space rockets. There are at least 100,000 of Jack Kilby's chips in your home. There are another 20,000 in your garage. There are another million or so in your office. They are everywhere."

Without Kilby, the computer as it is known would be far, far bulkier.

"A laptop computer circuit would have filled Yankee stadium in those days," Reid said. "Jack reduced all the circuitry to a tiny little sliver of silicon. He reduced the size by about 1 million, and therefore made all the digital world that we live with today possible."

Kilby helped pave the way for all the things the world now take for granted -- online shopping, video games, streetlights, the entire space program, iPods and digital cameras, to name a few.

"A good problem is a real challenge," said Kilby. "They're fun to work on."

They are also profitable beyond belief. Electronics is a trillion-dollar-a-year industry. This year, teenage girls are the No. 1 consumer of Kilby's chips.

If Japan or Germany had developed the microchip, Silicon Valley might be overseas, with all the wealth that accompanied it.

"Jack Kilby was a true technology pioneer," said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. "His work literally transformed the world."

Early Years

Kilby was 34 and working for Texas Instruments when he invented the microchip in 1958.

There had been little public appreciation for a man who won virtually every engineering prize in a career that spanned 50 years. Friends describe him as soft-spoken, modest and someone who never coveted the spotlight.

After Kilby learned he had won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000, for instance, he made himself a cup of coffee.

"I don't know when I decided I wanted to be an engineer, but certainly by the time I was well into high school, I never considered anything else," said Kilby.

Kilby grew up in Kansas. His father ran a small electric company. Kilby flunked the entrance exam to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but did eventually become an electrical engineer. He went to work in Minneapolis for the only firm that offered him a job.

"In my case, the engineering has been a very exciting and satisfying career," Kilby said.

Many wonder how Kilby came up with the word "microchip."

"There were a couple of alternate suggestions," he said. Texas Instruments "tended to call those little parts a "wafer." The rest of the industry didn't accept that and chose "chip." It was an arbitrary choice. It has no particular meaning. It isn't that "chip" is like chips of wood or potato chips or any other kinds of chips that I know of."

But for that tiny discovery, the world owes Kilby an enormous debt.

"I'd like to be remembered as a good engineer," Kilby said. "I do consider myself to be an engineer, not a scientist. I'd like to think that my work has had some contribution to society, and made this at least a more comfortable place to live."

ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas filed this report for "World News Tonight."