History Fact Finder | Science and Invention - When Was The First Computer Chip Developed?

When was the first computer chip developed?

The computer chip, or integrated circuit, was developed in the late 1950s by two researchers who were working independently of one another. Jack Kilby (1923– ) developed a chip at Texas Instruments in 1958, and Robert Noyce (1927–1990) invented a similar device at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959. The computer chip is an electronic device made of a very small piece of silicon (a nonmetallic element that, next to oxygen, is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust), which is usually less than one-quarter inch, or one centimeter, square. A computer microprocessor is a single chip that holds all of the computer's logic and arithmetic. It is responsible for interpreting and executing instructions given by a computer program (software). The microprocessor can be thought of as the brain of the computer's operating system. Today the chip typically has hundreds of...

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