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The Chip : How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution

T.R. Reid

4.24 · Rating details · 537 ratings · 60 reviews

Barely fifty years ago a computer was a gargantuan, vastly expensive thing that only a handful of scientists had ever seen. The world’s brightest engineers were stymied in their quest to make these machines small and affordable until the solution finally came from two ingenious young Americans. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce hit upon the stunning discovery that would make pos ...more

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Kindle Edition, Revised Edition, 320 pages

Published December 18th 2007 by Random House (first published January 1st 1984)

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Nov 14, 2008 Eric_W rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir, technology

Technophobes might as well move on to the next review. I loved this book. It explained in clear, precise language how innumerable barriers were overcome by innovative and insightfully brilliant individuals to create a device that revolutionized our lives. I've always been fascinated by electronics, built my own radios and earned an amateur radio license in 7th grade, just because the subject and theory of how electrons move around to perform useful functions is intriguing. Reid has captured much Technophobes might as well move on to the next review. I loved this book. It explained in clear, precise language how innumerable barriers were overcome by innovative and insightfully brilliant individuals to create a device that revolutionized our lives. I've always been fascinated by electronics, built my own radios and earned an amateur radio license in 7th grade, just because the subject and theory of how electrons move around to perform useful functions is intriguing. Reid has captured much of that fascination and translated it into a great story.

Before integrated circuits could be produced, the transistor had to be invented. Before that time, switching mechanism, required a vacuum tube to control, amplify and switch the flow of electrons through a circuit. It was the discovery that some semiconductor materials could be doped to have an excess of positive charges or negative charges that provided the breakthrough. A strip of germanium could be doped at each end with differing charges leaving a junction in the middle. The junction worked like a turnstile that could control the flow of current when connected to a battery. Variations in current across these junctions connected in the transistor formation could rectify (prevent current from flowing in both directions) and amplify. That's all that's needed to make a radio (I'm oversimplifying obviously) and hundreds of other devices. Transistors required vastly less current than vacuum tubes, were almost infinitely stable, were cheap and gave off little heat.

But, transistors required thousands of connections to the wires coming in order to make a useful circuit, and as demands for more complex circuitry arose the wiring became infinitely complex. This interconnection problem became a huge barrier that could have prevented the effective utilization of the advantages of the transistor

"You read everything. . . You accumulate all this trivia, and you hope that someday maybe a millionth of it will be useful," remembers Jack Kilby, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit. He also insists that he is not a scientist but an engineer. "A scientist is motivated by knowledge; he basically wants to explain something. An engineer's drive is to solve problems, to make something work. . . . Reid has elegantly interwoven the biographies of Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. One of the delights of the book was learning how the two inventors thought, how they proceeded, and why they went in the directions they did.

Robert Noyce, founder of Intel, had developed a process to make transistors in arrays on a silicon wafer. They cut apart the transistors and then hired "thousands of women with tweezers to pick them up and try to wire them together. It just seemed so stupid." He, too, realized the tyranny of interconnection numbers. What they both came up with was the "Monolithic Idea." The notion that an entire circuit could be designed and produced on those silicon chips.

Obviously, there is little suspense in the story, but Reid captures and holds our attention. Both men accomplished the same feat at about the same time, approaching it from different directions. Kilby showed how the transistors could be placed on a single wafer and Noyce showed how the chips and circuits could be manufactured. Every transistor radio used the patent Kilby was awarded for his work. In so doing, he turned the future that Orwell had predicted in 1984 on its head. Instead of a monolithic centralization of power in the hands of a few computer elite who controlled all the computing power, "the mass distribution of microelectronics had spawned a massive decentralization of computing power. In the real 1984, millions of ordinary people could match the governmental or corporate computer bit for bit. In the real 1984, the stereotypical computer user had become a Little Brother seated at the keyboard to write his seventh-grade science report."

The social impact was enormous. Slide rules that had been ubiquitous were completely eliminated in just a few years by the handheld calculator that has become so cheap it is often given away in promotions. The Japanese gained virtual control over the memory chip industry because of the way they handled their work force. Americans had a monopoly until the 1973 recession. American companies typically lay off workers to save money during downturns. The Japanese try to keep their work force employed. This meant that when the demand for chips exploded, Americans did not have the capacity to produce enough to meet the demand. The Japanese, having trained workers available, met that demand and were able to produce enough at such a volume to keep the price so low as to inhibit any competition. That and their emphasis on high quality gained them 42% of the world market by 1980. The "Anderson Bombshell" report of 1980 (Anderson was a manager at Hewlett-Packard) that showed that Japanese chips were far more reliable than those made in the United States helped seal their market share.

It took winning the Nobel Prize for Noyce and Kilby to be recognized in the United States (Japan, a nation that honors its engineers, had awarded Noyce and Kilby numerous accolades over the years.) The final irony remains that in "our media-soaked society, with its insatiable appetite for important, or at least interesting, personalities, has somehow managed to overlook a pair of genuine national heroes- two Americans who had a good idea that has improved the daily lot of the world." ...more

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Apr 10, 2020 Thomas Dietert rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone intrigued by micro-electronics

From start to finish, "The Chip" was a markedly insightful, thorough, broad-sweeping, and satisfying account of the inception of the micro-processor revolution . The author-- T.R. Reid, a journalist and technical writer-- provides an intriguing account of the seminal steps taken by the technology industry of the mid-20th century that brought humanity from relying on vacuum tubes as the core component of electronics (radios, computers, etc.) to semi-conductor "chips" comprised of billions of t From start to finish, "The Chip" was a markedly insightful, thorough, broad-sweeping, and satisfying account of the inception of the micro-processor revolution . The author-- T.R. Reid, a journalist and technical writer-- provides an intriguing account of the seminal steps taken by the technology industry of the mid-20th century that brought humanity from relying on vacuum tubes as the core component of electronics (radios, computers, etc.) to semi-conductor "chips" comprised of billions of transistors that govern our daily habits and way of life far more than we might realize. The book's primary focus is on the solid-state physics and engineering advancements that predicated the solution to the Tyranny of Numbers problem faced by engineers trying to build more complex circuits out of the revolutionary new electronic component: the transistor; two engineers, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, astoundingly conceived of a solution to the problem within 6 months of one another, approaching the problem from two different perspectives and almost simultaneously settling on "The Monolithic Idea".

All throughout, Reid does not hesitate to provide the reader with sufficient descriptions of the underlying technologies at each stage of humanity's technological progression towards microchips as they exist today. Perhaps not for the technology averse reader, this book is a wonderful chronicle of potentially the most important series of scientific and engineering advancements of the 20th century-- Advancements that led to the ubiquity of such devices as the smart phone, the personal computer, and all of micro-electronics that now permeate the fabric of society in the 21st century.

It all started with the vacuum tube, and De Forest's insight into the fact that the "Edison Effect" (i.e. thermionic emission- the transmission of electric current through a vacuum, from filament to conductor) could be intricately leveraged such that an alternating current through a filament could induce a direct current in a nearby metal plate; With the insertion of a positively or negatively charged "grid" (or "screen") placed between the filament and the metal plate, De Forest showed that small variances in the charge applied to the grid could produce large variances in the current induced in the metal plate. Thus, the first vacuum tube amplifier was born, laying the foundations for radio sets and televisions that proliferated through American living rooms during the early and mid 20th century. Perhaps an equally important discovery was the fact that the current induced in the metal plate could be "switched" on or off thousands of times per second; this property of vacuum tubes provided the foundation for building the world's first computers (such as the ENIAC). Albeit state of the art at the time, the rather crude technology had many drawbacks: The large, power hungry, vacuum tubes had filaments that frequently burned out, and often generated a large amount of residual heat, making maintenance of contraptions based on the technology quite unwieldy.

Luckily for the world, William Shockley invented the transistor in 1947 at Bell Labs, using the semiconductor silicon-dioxide, to provide such an electronic switching and amplifying device that improved upon the vacuum tube in virtually every way: it generated orders of magnitude less heat, provided the same current amplification, could switch on and off much more quickly (billions of time per second!), and was the size of a pencil eraser (orders of magnitude smaller than existing vacuum tubes!). Subsequently, construction of far more complex circuits was enabled, and within a few years after the invention of the transistor, the industry had almost all but abandoned the vacuum tubes that were so recently the foundation of electronics at the time. It seemed like the industry had found its way out of the technological rut of the time, and for the next 5 years or so made quick strides in the miniaturization of most existing electronic circuit components; However, as much as the transistor served as the critical component of these smaller, more energy efficient electronic circuits, there was another problem electronics engineers would come to face just several years following the ubiquity of the semiconductor transistor. Pleasingly, the author goes into sufficient detail regarding the solid-state physics that begot such a silicon transistor; I greatly appreciated the explanations of the utility of semi-conductors in conjunction with the Boron/Arsenic doping process to allow for such current switching and electronic signal amplification.

As engineers attempted to build the complex circuits they could conceive, they quickly ran into the seemingly insurmountable problem of manually wiring together the electronic components (transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc.) of their increasingly complex circuit designs. Although the transistor theoretically permitted more complex and reliable circuit construction, the way in which the components had to be tediously wired together (by hand!) brought the industry advancements that fell out of the invention of the transistor to a stand-still. In the late 1950's, a solution to the Tyranny of Numbers was the prime directive of many great minds (and electronics companies) at the time, and the one to find such a solution would reap the benefits of a several-years head start on the production of circuit with the degree of complexity which the industry desired. As it turned out, two engineers, Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments (TI), and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, almost simultaneously happened upon an ingenious solution (in fact, the same solution) to the numerical tyranny that plagued the industry: The Monolithic Idea.

In 1958, both Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce conceived of a solution to the Tyranny of Numbers: if transistors could be made of silicon, then why couldn't other circuit components? Kilby and Noyce both had the idea that resistors, capacitors, and other critical electronic circuit components could be fabricated on silicon wafers too. Without going into the solid-state physics that made such an idea possible, both engineers conceived of such a solution from two different perspectives: Kilby concocted his solution in an ad-hoc, piecemeal fashion, imprecisely (but functionally!) building a single silicon circuit into a single slab of silicon with "flying wires" coming out at all angles. Conversely, Noyce postulated from the perspective of manufacturing tons of transistors on a single silicon wafer (the silicon transistor "fab" process): If a thin layer of silicon-dioxide was lain across the top of the N/P doped silicon "three-layer cake", one could insert wires through the top silicon layer to connect transistors composed of the underlying three layers to other transistors in the same wafer; Furthermore, instead of using external wires as connections, one could print thin copper connections between the components atop the top silicon-dioxide layer as part of the manufacturing process! Though both engineers had the insight to construct other crucial circuit components out of silicon dioxide, Kilby beat Noyce to the punch by about 6 months; However, Noyce conceived of the variant of the idea which necessarily integrated seamlessly into the existing manufacturing process of silicon wafers and the transistor manufacturing process. Thus, the following set of chapters that cover the resulting legal battle over patent awards between TI and Fairchild, speedy advancements in the production of micro-electronics, the influence such a discovery had on the notion of personal computing, and intriguing stories such as Kilby's invention of the pocket-calculator at TI (in the mid 1960's) are all deeply intriguing and captivating.

In the latter part of the book, the author takes liberty to diverge from the purely technological account of history and begins to frame the microprocessor revolution within the context of broader societal issues. For instance, one of the core reasons why micro-electronics development and production took off as quickly as it did was due to the US government's interest in putting a man on the moon; As a result, the US government poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the technology companies that were leading the charge on the silicon chip fabrication processes, and could thus be considered as one of the core reason why such rapid engineering progress was made. Arguably, without the USA's interest in shrinking the size of computers such that one could be launched into orbit and with the computational resources (increasing linearly w/ the shrinking size of the transistor) to guide such a mission, the pervasiveness of micro-electronics could be decades behind where it is today. Reid also goes on a brief tangent into the international competition of the electronics markets, focusing mostly on the effective production and market tactics of Japanese electronics manufacturers and the engineering difficulties inherent in the production of micro-electronics. Though this topic was not the reason I picked up the book, these chapter covering Japan's repeated successful entry into the international micro-electronics markets (starting with radio and television) and seemingly inevitable dominance captured my attention as well as the rest of the book; I found that Reid's coupling of the aforementioned advancements in microchip engineering and manufacturing with characterizations of the international political and economic dynamics at the time allowed me to conceive of such a technological and cultural revolution more clearly.

In my opinion, "The Chip" is a remarkable account of a series of several seminal inventions and advancements in electronics, the star of which being the silicon microchip. With digressions into other foundational concepts that paved the way for the micro-electronics revolution-- such as Shannon's insight into using Boolean Logic to construct circuits that execute computations-- Reid presents an eloquently candid and entertaining account of most relevant scientific and engineering discoveries with sufficient technical depth, keeping the reader stimulated and engaged. Complete with comprehensive explanations of the underlying physics, engineering, computational, and manufacturing concepts and processes that are necessary to viscerally grok the magnitude of the creativity of the ground-breaking discoveries that led to the advent of micro-electronics' penetration into modern society, Reid characterizes the very life-blood of our contemporary society: That is, there is virtually no aspect of modern society that the micro-processor revolution hasn't significantly altered and/or become the foundation of, since it's inception. If there's a book out there that presents the incredible story of the microprocessor revolution of the mid 20th century in such breadth and depth without sacrificing readability, I'd be astounded. ...more

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Dec 02, 2019 Simon Eskildsen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Okay, Shackley & Co gave us the magnificent transistor in 1947, but how did we get from there to the general-purpose, spreadsheet-wrangling CPUs we have today? You can think of a transistor as a hose with an electric clamp. The clamp prevents water from flowing through it only when electricity goes to the clamp. If you stop sending electricity to the clamp, the flow of water resumes.

With the electric-clamp, we can now build circuits. Imagine a hose with two clamps next to each other, A and B:

--- ...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Christopher Litsinger rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, read-in-2013

Can you name the inventors of the microprocessor? I couldn't, in spite of the fact that I have a career that wouldn't even exist without the invention. So because of that, I'm glad I read this book, which focuses on the inventors (Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce fwiw).
However the book is frustrating in a lot of ways. It is neither a biography of the two inventors, or a technical text, but sort of attempts to do both. There's a chapter explaining how microprocessors work at a fairly technical level- ...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Marcos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Chip, recounts a fascinating story of two relatively unknown men that changed the course of modern civilization... really. Although working for different companies, many miles apart, they simultaneously came up with the monolithic idea, a basic blueprint for the modern microchip. This concept overcame the last remaining limit in the advancement of processing power that was known as the tyranny of numbers.

The book also shows the importance of government support in new industries as the only w ...more

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Oct 14, 2020 Dave Cremins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: technology

The definitive account of the micro-processor and how it has shaped almost all aspects of life. I'm sad that I have finished this book. What a read!!! ...more

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Feb 04, 2020 Debbie rated it it was amazing

Readable, incredibly informative fire the non-engineer

Reid's book is clear, understandable, but delves into electronics, in general, and tie integrated circuit, in particular. He begins with Jack Kilby and Bib Noyes and the monolithic idea, but then the story goes back in time covering all that lead to the microchip. I particularly liked that he focused on who invented rather than what was invented.

Reid treated his roux much like Kilby and Noyes: he took the problem and found a solution. Kilby ...more

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Apr 14, 2021 Lee rated it liked it · review of another edition

first half contains satisfying history and explanation the transistor and microchip, with some focus on the personalities and the problem-solving mindset of engineers that distinguishes them from scientists. as book zooms out in second half to later developments of microchip industry it is less interesting, more skim-worthy. it is curious that jack kirby is so well-known in japan, and it does seem like a credit to them as the celebrity of gates/bezos/musk etc is surely more to do with dazzle of ...more

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Jan 28, 2020 Marshall Lee Miller rated it it was amazing

The Third Revolution

important technical events ably presented, that created much of what we call modern--calculators, cellphones, computers, and even the innards of auto engines. If you know generally about such technology, you'd really enjoy this book. If you don't already know a little about such relationships, you're probably too dumb to understand it and should find some simpler book with crayons. ...more

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Feb 01, 2020 Straker rated it liked it

Shelves: industrial-history, non-fiction

Call it 3.5 stars. The first two-thirds of the book, which covers the progression from vacuum tubes to transistors to microchips, is quite interesting. The last third however drifts into subjects like the inner workings of a pocket calculator, the invention of television, and the rise of Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, all of which are only vaguely related to the main topic and which feel very much like padding. There's a better book waiting to be written about this subject. ...more

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Feb 09, 2020 Mike Augustine rated it it was amazing

If this book’s title sparks any interest for you, it’ll likely exceed your expectations; it did mine. It covers essential technological evolutionary steps that are foundational to the chip’s creation, the creation of the chip and all that has followed, and especially the personalities and their trials, challenges, and successes. A thorough explanation of the essence of how computers operate is included. The book does a fine job of honoring Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, the chips inventors.

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Nov 08, 2020 Rick Norman rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I loved this book! Fascinating story about the dawn of computing in Texas and a sleepy little suburb of San Francisco and all the amazing stories and characters that eventually made Silicon Valley. T.R. Reid tells an epic story from vacuum tubes, the tyranny of numbers to silicon wafers and the space program in an easy laid back style and describes it in layman's terms so it never became too technical or tedious. ...more

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Mar 30, 2021 Edmond rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The first 40 pages are a turn off, there are too many facts and too much science, but the next 160 pages are a gem. The history of the chip and how it started was something I was not aware of. Sitting at the beach, reading this book was an absolute joy to learn about the microchip and how it came to revolutionize the world. I wish the book had an update, there has been so much that has happened since the 1980s, a bit outdated in a world that moves so fast.

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Jul 23, 2018 Dennis McClure rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

First of all, the subjects of this book--Kilby and Noyce--stood the world on its head. And very few people have ever heard of them. Reid did his best to change that. He couldn't, but the failure is ours, not his.

Second, Reid is a marvelous writer with a striking ability to render technical subjects understandable.

It's an old book. But you need to read it. ...more

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Jan 25, 2020 Terri Chapin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book fascinated me! After working more than 20 years in the semiconductor industry, T.R. Reid explained in a satisfactory way just how these components I’ve been making work! And who knew that I could understand Boolean logic! A little dated at this point, but the historical facets are nonetheless intact. I’d love to read an updated version!

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Mar 16, 2020 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Popular science writing at its finest. Accessible, forthright, curious. The author didn’t know anything about this subject before writing it and so has a humility and a wonder at the topics of integrated circuits and transistors that anyone will understand and appreciate. Would recommend to anyone who uses a computer aka everyone.

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May 24, 2020 Mike Shaw rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Five stars if you are into technology. Excellent biography of two important men and the beginning of the electronics era. I liked the deep dive into their personalities as well as the review of the industry in general.

It really provides an excellent perspective of what we take for granted today.

Very well written.

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Aug 18, 2020 Hans Rigelman rated it it was amazing

Good Concise History of the Electronics Industry

It's more than a story about two humble men, Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby, who invented the integrated circuit. This is a story about how engineers and sometimes governments learn how to solve problems and improve our world. Okay we're still working on that global warming thing. ...more

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Jan 13, 2019 Nathan Davis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Really enjoyable, if somewhat dated. It’s interesting to read a book from a time where notion of bytes is a foreign term to most people and requires elaborate explanation.

Fairly short and worth the quick binge read.

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Apr 02, 2019 Alain van Hoof rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: computing-history

A great story about the almost simultaneous ideas that let to the Integrated Circuit. What I like especially is the way the author acknowledge the fact that the discovery was done by "standing on the shoulders of giants" and does not forget to introduce those giants even if the not from the USA. ...more

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Jan 21, 2020 Grey Webb rated it it was amazing

Written for the layman

Although I had a basic understanding of how my digital devices worked, this books takes a deep dive into the history, theory and architecture of the microchip.

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Mar 29, 2020 Tigran Hakobyan rated it it was amazing

Fantastic book about the inventors behind microchip. Learned the history and some of the fascinating details on how the chips work and what makes them one of the most breakthroughs of 20th century. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about the history of computing.

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Jul 11, 2017 Senthil Kumaran rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Excellent book on making of the silicon valley. It is the story of people who were responsible for American leadership in the technology sector.

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Apr 11, 2018 Andy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Very informative! I love how this was written almost as a sort of nonfictional narrative, rather than a boring textbook. Highly recommended.

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Jun 18, 2018 Molly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Excellent overview of the computer industry and the inventors and patents that made it possible. Recommended by Professor Adam Mossoff in a lecture on intellectual property. I enjoyed it very much.

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Dec 29, 2018 Mark Kelley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a wonderful book comparing Jack Kilby from Texas instruments to Robert Noyce of Intel...and the long battle to see who it really invented the integrated circuit.

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Jan 23, 2020 Hemhek Song rated it really liked it

Shelves: technology

Very well written. Explains the concepts in a very accessible manner.

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Feb 04, 2020 James Brooke rated it it was amazing

very good read, heartily recommend

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Mar 06, 2020 Bob rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-read-books

Technology is great

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Mar 15, 2020 Eric rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I never knew about this part of history!

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About T.R. Reid

T.R. Reid

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T.R. Reid is a reporter, documentary film correspondent and author. He is also a frequent guest on NPR's Morning Edition. Through his reporting for The Washington Post, his syndicated weekly column, and his light-hearted commentary from around the world for National Public Radio, he has become one of America’s best-known foreign correspondents.

Reid, a Classics major at Princeton University, served ...more

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