Ingratitude, thy name is you. Yes, that's you, gentle reader. Don't feel outraged though, as it's only natural that so much is taken for granted in our fast-paced, tech-savvy world. After all, when was the last time you thanked the tiny device that allows you to watch the telly, listen to the stereo, talk on the mobile, microwave your food and even start your car? A device to which the personal computer and the entire Internet owe their very existence.

THE TYRANNY OF NUMBERS

Devising and pioneering a revolutionary technology driving a world-leading industry would be the multi-billion-pound dream of any plucky, burgeoning inventor. But for Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, it was simply a problem requiring an urgent solution.

In July 1958, virtually alone in the stark white rooms of the Texas Instruments labs, recently-hired electrical engineer Kilby had been immersed neck-deep for weeks in extensive documentation on the greatest technological challenge of the time: how to miniaturise increasingly large transistor circuit designs.

Ten years earlier, transistors had blazed new exciting trails in electronics, but were quickly caught in a catch-22 situation, impairing further progress. The more complex the computer, the more transistors were needed, which meant an exceedingly large amount of wiring and components. These in turn had to be mostly assembled by hand, with an obvious ill effect on cost and reliability. There seemed to be no way around it — extra computing power invariably demanded larger machines.

When Jack Kilby was hired by TI, the company had already committed to a daisy-chained, puzzle-esque transistorised circuit design which would hopefully save on overall wiring. Kilby, however, wasn't too keen on this particular approach, but as a newcomer he would hardly be given a chance to make his voice heard in the upper echelons of management. On the other hand, not being eligible for that year's summer vacation meant he had the opportunity to delve into TI's archives and sketch out his ideas for an alternate theory without being disturbed.

A MONOLITH FAR AHEAD OF ITS TIME

Could an exponentially large amount of transistor components possibly be etched into a exponentially small amount of space? Not for the engineering experts of the time, but for Kilby, unaware of the major stumbling blocks his fellow colleagues had faced, imagination ran wild. If different materials made miniaturisation harder, why not produce all components out of the same semiconducting material? The idea looked good on paper, especially having in mind that germanium, his element of choice for testing, was available in surplus at TI.

On September 12, 1958, a stillness hangs in the cool, dry air of TI's project management office — with the company officials looking on, Jack Kilby is about to apply electricity to his rough germanium-based prototype board. As soon as power is fed into the unit, a clean sine wave instantly jolts into undulating life on the oscilloscope screen, hailing a closed circuit... and in that precise moment, the microchip was born.

A few months later, more than 1,500 miles away in California, Robert Noyce, heading R&D at Fairchild Semiconductor, independently theorised a similar concept, but came up with a silicon-based structure encased in a protective coating layer which, unbeknownst to him, would enable Kilby's finding to be brought into industrial production. Without realising it, the two men had co-invented the integrated circuit.

However, not even in their bold, groundbreaking vision would Kilby and Noyce have imagined how small "microchip" would really stand for just a few decades later. A chip the size of your fingernail can contain dozens of millions of transistors arranged in patterns more complex than the complete road map of Europe, down to each individual street. Ongoing tests with nanotechnology are expected to bring about transistors so impossibly small as a single atom. The fascinating video below gives you a hint at the microscopic components that will be packing the power of the future.