Integrated Circuit

Hello there. You might not see me, but I am everywhere. My name is Integrated Circuit, but my friends call me a microchip. I am super, super small, sometimes smaller than your littlest fingernail. Even though I am tiny, I have a very important job. I am the brain inside all your favorite electronic gadgets. Before I came along in the 1950s, things like computers were giants. They filled up whole rooms and were packed with tangles of wires that looked like a big plate of spaghetti. They were slow, got very hot, and it was hard to make them do new things. People needed a way to make electronics smaller, faster, and smarter, and that's where my story begins. I was an idea waiting to happen, a tiny brain for a big world.

Two very clever inventors had the same brilliant idea at about the same time, even though they worked in different places. Their names were Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, and they are like my two dads. They both wanted to solve the big problem of messy, giant electronics. Jack Kilby worked at a company called Texas Instruments. He worked hard all summer and was so excited to show everyone what he had made. On September 12th, 1958, he showed the very first working version of me. I wasn't very pretty back then, just a little piece of material with some wires sticking out, but I worked. I could feel the excitement in the room. I was alive. Meanwhile, a man named Robert Noyce, who worked at a company called Fairchild Semiconductor, was also thinking about me. In early 1959, he figured out an even better way to make me by putting all my parts on a single piece of silicon. His idea made me much easier to produce, so lots and lots of my microchip brothers and sisters could be born.

Because of the brilliant ideas from Jack and Robert, I started changing the world. My tiny size and big power meant that those room-sized computers could shrink. First, they became small enough to fit on a desk. Then they became laptops you could carry in a bag. Now, I help power the phone that fits right in your pocket. I even got to go on the most amazing adventure in the 1960s. I went to space. I was inside the computers on the Apollo missions that helped astronauts travel all the way to the Moon. I was so proud to be part of such a big journey. Today, I live almost everywhere you look. I am in your family's car, the television, your video games, and even some of your toys. I love being the tiny brain that helps you learn new things, talk to your friends, and have lots of fun. My job is to make amazing things possible, and I am happy to help you every single day.