Chip pioneer Jack Kilby dies

Microchip pioneer Jack Kilby, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize for co-inventing the integrated circuits that ushered in the digital age of personal computers, mobile phones and the internet, has died after a brief battle with cancer. He was 81.

In 1958, during his first year working with Texas Instruments Inc. in Dallas, Kilby used borrowed equipment to build the first integrated circuit. All the components were fabricated in a single piece of semi-conductor material half the size of a paper clip.