February 6, 1959Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments (TI) files for a patent on the integrated circuit. From the Nobel Prize website:The notion of an integrated circuit was there. … The people who were to demonstrate the practical possibility of an integrated circuit were two young engineers, Jack S. Kilby and Robert Noyce, working independently of each other. The integrated circuit is more of a technical invention than a discovery in physics. [But]…the development of the integrated circuit prompted enormous investment in research and development in solid-state physics.

Source: Forbes February 05, 2017 17:15 UTC