The world's first chip was invented by Jack Kilby.
Jack Kilby
As for your question "How did he know that sand can be used to make chips?" there are notes in bold in the introduction below
Jack Kilby (Jack Kilby, November 8, 1923 - June 20, 2005) was one of the two inventors of the integrated circuit. Kilby received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1947 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1950. In 1958, the world's first integrated circuit was successfully developed. In 2000, Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the integrated circuit.
The most common component of sand is silica, usually in the form of quartz, because of its stable chemical properties and hard texture
Of course, it is necessary to turn the sand sold on the street into a A technologically advanced CPU will inevitably go through a series of complex processes. First, the sand must be purified to select the purest elemental silicon raw material among hundreds of millions of gravels. This process is also very difficult. Natural sand needs to be melted at high temperature on a special high-temperature processing instrument, and then smelted into single-phase silicon crystals with an accuracy as high as 99.99. This is the first step in the "Great Wall", and there are still many hurdles waiting for it.
Kilby's father was an electrical engineer and served as president of the Kansas Electric Power Company. In the eyes of the world, Kilby was indeed a typical engineering man. Kilby is 1.89 meters tall, has a kind face and Mediterranean curly hair, and speaks surprisingly slowly when talking to people. However, Kilby's hands-on ability is top-notch. Moreover, Kilby has always been willing to be treated as an engineer and has always been quite confident in his hands-on ability.
In 1958, at the age of 34, Kilby officially joined Texas Instruments. At that time, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union entered its first climax. In 1957, the world's first man-made satellite was successfully put into orbit by the Soviet space agency. Public opinion in the United States was in an uproar, and the U.S. authorities and U.S. military departments were under great pressure. At that time, the U.S. military had already established a cooperative relationship with Texas Instruments, and the U.S. military requested Texas Instruments to develop miniaturized computer equipment. However, Kilby felt that rather than integrating all the finished components together as Texas Instruments planned, it would be better to integrate these components onto a chip from the beginning. This avoids complicated connections between components. He took advantage of other Texas Instruments employees to go on vacation and stayed alone in the semiconductor laboratory to conduct research on this.
Jack Kilby
After more than two months of hard work, Kilby invented the world's first invention on September 12, 1958. A sample integrated circuit, half an inch long, consisting of two circuits on a piece of germanium. Kilby then showed the sample to his colleagues. When he nervously checked the connections and pushed the switch, a light green model line crossed the oscilloscope screen, drawing a perfect sine waveform. The experiment was successful! Kilby's success relied largely on his surgeon-like skills in manually connecting components to chips with thin metal wires, but he was still far from practical production on a factory assembly line. ”
The world’s first integrated circuit
I mentioned Kilby and his invention of the world’s first integrated circuit, and naturally we will talk about Noyce later. Noyce Si grew up in an ordinary rural village in the Midwest of the United States. He did not have a prominent family background. He relied entirely on his diligence and intelligence to create a great career in the world's semiconductor industry. This is a popular saying in the world's IT industry. This statement: "The invention patent for integrated circuit chips is jointly held by two people, one is Kilby, and the other is Noyce, who is well-known in the IT industry.
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Shortly after Noyce, Moore and others founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957, Fairchild Semiconductor, like Texas Instruments, also tried to find ways to miniaturize computer equipment. So Noyce The research team led by it had to overcome a large number of problems. One of the most critical technical difficulties was that "the more wires in the circuit, the farther the electronic pulses go, and people cannot make the pulses faster than the speed of light, so people can build fast computers." "The best solution is to reduce the pulse travel distance by shrinking the circuit board." Noyce's team spent more than two years solving this worldwide technical problem. In July 1959, Noyce developed A kind of silica (the main component of sand is silica) diffusion technology and PN junction isolation technology, and creatively making aluminum strip connections on the oxide film to integrate the components and wires into one, developed The planar manufacturing process of semiconductor chips laid a solid foundation for industrial mass production. Since the commercial prospects of silicon are far better than those of germanium, Noyce has always focused on silicon chips.
Later. , Fairchild Semiconductor eventually fell apart. One of the main reasons was that the conflicts between the R&D team and investors continued to intensify. The eight founders of Fairchild Semiconductor had to go their separate ways, and among them, Noyce, Moore and Grove. Co-founded Intel in 1968. Previously, Intel's main business was focused on memory. In April 1969, Busicom, a Japanese computer manufacturer, entered into a business cooperation with Intel, and Intel developed corresponding special processors for Busicom's five calculators. .