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How well do you know the microscopic silicon brains that power our entire modern world? Test your knowledge on the history, science, and scale of the integrated circuit.
Circuit Curious 0–4 · Silicon Explorer 5–8 · Master of Micro 9–10
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Jack Kilby built the very first working integrated circuit in September 1958 while working at Texas Instruments. He used a tiny strip of germanium for his prototype. Because of this groundbreaking invention, Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.
Photo: James R. Biard, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Early computers relied on vacuum tubes to control electricity, but they were bulky, consumed massive amounts of power, and burned out frequently like light bulbs. The transition to solid-state microchips made computers thousands of times smaller, faster, and far more reliable.
Photo: Stefan Riepl (Quark48), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 de.
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Silicon is the bedrock of modern microchips because of its excellent semiconducting properties and abundance—it is the second most common element in Earth's crust, found in ordinary sand! It replaced germanium because it performs much better at higher temperatures.
Photo: Rasiel Suarez on behalf of Luciteria LLC, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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William Shockley co-invented the transistor and set up his laboratory in Mountain View, California, to commercialize it. However, his difficult management style led eight brilliant engineers to resign and start Fairchild Semiconductor, effectively birthing what we now call Silicon Valley.
Photo: Dicklyon at English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Photolithography is the key technique used to transfer microscopic circuit designs onto silicon. It works similarly to old-school film photography, using ultraviolet light to expose a light-sensitive chemical coating on the wafer, which is then etched away to form the transistors.
Photo: Rob Bulmahn, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit central processing unit delivered on a single chip. Originally designed for a Japanese calculator company called Busicom, this tiny chip packed 2,300 transistors and had the same computing power as the massive ENIAC computer built in 1946.
Photo: Thomas Nguyen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, Moore's law has guided the tech industry's rapid pace of innovation for decades. While not a physical law of nature, it served as a target for manufacturers to continuously shrink transistors to atomic scales.
Photo: Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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Microchip fabrication plants utilize advanced cleanrooms where the air is filtered to be thousands of times cleaner than a hospital operating room. A single speck of dust is much larger than modern transistors and can completely ruin an entire silicon wafer.
Photo: Stan Zurek, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to identify and track tags. Tap-to-pay cards use Near Field Communication (NFC), a fine-tuned subset of RFID. Passive tags don't need a battery; they are powered wirelessly by the reader's electromagnetic field.
Photo: Nicolas Eynaud, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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While Jack Kilby made the first working prototype out of germanium, Robert Noyce independently invented the silicon integrated circuit a few months later. Noyce's design solved the practical problem of connecting components on a single chip, making mass production possible.
Photo: Intel Free Press, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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