Two engineers invented the integrated circuit independently, months apart
In 1958, Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments built the first working integrated circuit, cramming a transistor and other components onto one sliver of germanium. Months later Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor patented a more practical silicon version. Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics; Noyce, who died in 1990, could not share it.