Jack St Clair Kilby, Ex-W9GTY, Inventor of the IC, Dies at 81
 Jack Kilby [courtesy University of Illinois School of Engineering and Computer
Science] |
(June 22, 2005) -- Jack Kilby, who held the call sign W9GTY in
the 1930s and `40s, died in Dallas June 20 at age 81. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for the invention of the first monolithic
integrated circuit.
A native of Great Bend, Kansas, Kilby has been credited with making the
Information Age possible. His interest in ham radio was recounted in a
Web site
dedicated to his achievements:
"As a boy, Kilby used to travel the western half of the state
with his father in the summers, checking on various power plants in the
family's 1935 Buick. When a severe ice storm crippled Western Kansas in
1937, Kilby and his Dad borrowed a neighbor's ham radio to communicate
with the various power plants around the state. Kilby became interested in
ham radio, and got his license from the FCC, with his own set of call
letters--W9GTY."
ARRL HQ staff member Chuck Skolaut, K0BOG, recalled: "[He] was my
hometown's claim to a famous person. He was sometimes known as `Mr IC.' I
remember the first time I heard about the big blizzard and how his father
communicated with other people in the area with help from his ham friends.
That got Jack interested in ham radio."
Following college and a stint in the Army, Kilby went to work on the
transistor for Centralab in Milwaukee. In 1958, he moved to Dallas to work
for Texas Instruments, where he came upon the idea of creating the
integrated circuit. By 1960 the first chips were made available to
industry, and the age of microelectonics was upon us.
The vanity call sign W9GTY is today held by the J. S. Kilby Digital
Millenium, based at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey,
California.
Page last modified: 01:16 PM, 22 Jun 2005 ET
Page author: awextra@arrl.org
Copyright © 2005, American Radio Relay League, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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