Microchip: An Idea, Its Genesis, And The Revolution It Created - Hardcover

Jeffrey Zygmont is a business writer who specializes in high-tech topics. He has written for BusinessWeek, Boston Magazine, Inc., and CFO and has been a staff writer for High Technology and a columnist for Omni. He lives in Salem, New Hampshire.

Zygmont compares the invention of the integrated circuit to that of steel--something we use constantly in our day-to-day lives yet rarely stop to contemplate. When it was first invented, the microchip, really an extremely dense packet of transistors, had few fans. There was great resistance to its introduction in the early 1960s, as circuit makers were content with wiring their own rather than using the ready-made ICs. It took not only the ability to create a circuit on a fleck of silicon, but also the vision to find applications for it, first in hand-held calculators, then microwave oven controllers, then cell phones and automobiles, and finally in computers. This is the story of the visionaries who brought us this incredibly complex technology that we take for granted today, such as Jack Kirby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce and Ted Hoff of Intel, as well as some of the unsung heroes of the field. Zygmont succeeds in demystifying the strange processes involved in creating these microscopic circuits and connects us back to what will soon be considered another era. David Siegfried
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