Summary of T.R. Reid's The Chip EPUB

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The idea that changed the world was conceived by Jack Kilby at the height of summer, when everyone else was on vacation. It was an idea of cosmic dimensions, and it would eventually win Kilby the Nobel Prize in Physics.

#2 In the 1950s, Americans were excited about the future, and magazines were happy to feed that appetite. The major breakthroughs in biology, genetics, and medicine were still a few years away, but in electronics, the late fifties saw some marvelous innovation almost every month.

#3 The idea to create a smaller, more efficient computer chip was proposed by Jack Kilby and his colleagues in the electronics business. They knew that if they didn’t develop this new idea, someone else would, and they were worried that someone else might be Texas Instruments.

#4 In 1959, Bob Noyce, a physicist and engineer, started a company called Fairchild Semiconductor that produced improved versions of transistors and other mechanical devices. He had a loquacious nature, and he often needed somebody to listen to his ideas and point out the ones that couldn’t possibly work.