1958 Integrated Circuit Prototypes From Jack Kilby's TI Lab Up For Sale 76
First time accepted submitter Dharma's Dad writes Christie's New York is auctioning off a 1958 prototype microchip, used by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments in his Nobel Prize-winning invention of putting an integrated circuit onto a single chip. Gifted to one of the lab employees by Kilby, the family has decided to sell it. Estimated at $1,000,000 - $2,000,000, this prototype integrated circuit was built between July 18 and September 12, 1958, of a doubly diffused germanium wafer with flying gold wire and four leads.
Re:Microchip (Score:4, Interesting)
At Texas Instruments, an integrated circuit was called a "bar", not "chip" or "die", partly because that's what Jack called them. Wafers were called "slices", so your multiprobe yield was expressed in "good bars per slice". They finally dropped the Texas jargon in the mid-'80s when it became obvious that it was a silly affectation in the face of industry-standard terminology and an obstacle to communicating clearly with vendors and customers.
Re:Microchip (Score:3, Interesting)
Two guesses...
1. Microchip [microchip.com] is a brand name. Calling an IC a Microchip is like calling a moving staircase an Escalator [wikipedia.org].
2. "Microchip" sounds like a disagreeably small snack. Quite the contrary, they are quite filling.