Jack St. Clair Kilby was a Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 2000 for his invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at Texas Instruments (TI). He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and thermal printer. In mid-1958, Kilby was a newly employed engineer at Texas Instruments who did not yet have the right to a summer vacation. He spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design that was commonly called the "tyranny of numbers" and finally came to the conclusion that manufacturing the circuit components en masse in a single piece of semiconductor material could provide a solution. On September 12 he presented his findings to the management, which included Mark Shepherd: he showed them a piece of germanium with an oscilloscope attached, pressed a switch, and the oscilloscope showed a continuous sine wave, proving that his integrated circuit worked and thus that he solved the problem (source: wikipedia.org)
Inventors 1900 - 1949 (birth dates)
Dennis Gabor
(1900-1979)
Hungarian
holography
Leighton A. Wilkie
(1900-1993)
American
the metal-cutting band saw (contour band machine)
Enrico Fermi
(1901-1954
Italian
nuclear reactor
Rudolf Hell
(1901-2002)
German
the Hellschreiber
John von Neumann (Janos Neumann)
(1903-1957)
Hungarian
Von Neumann computer architecture
Franc Trkman
(1903-1978)
Slovenia
electrical switches - accessories for opening windows
John Vincent Atanasoff
(1903-1995)
American
modern programmable computer
J. Robert Oppenheimer
(1904-1967)
American
the father of the atomic bomb
Arthur M. Young
(1905-1995)
American
the Bell Helicopter
Philo Farnsworth
(1906-1971)
American
electronic television
Peter Carl Goldmark
(1906-1977)
Hungarian
vinyl record (LP)
Victor Hasselblad
(1906-1978)
Swedish
invented the 6 x 6 cm single-lens reflex camera
Ivan Knunyants
(1906-1990)
British
invented Nylon-6
Frank Whittle
(1907-1996)
British
co-inventor of the jet engine
Holger Crafoord
(1908-1982)
Swedish
inventor of the artificial kidney
Edward Teller (Ede Teller)
(1908-2003)
Hungarian
hydrogen bomb
Edwin H. Land
(1909-1991)
American
Polaroid polarizing filters and the Land Camera
William Bradford Shockley
(1910-1989)
American
co-inventor of transistor
Jacques Cousteau
(1910-1997)
French
co-inventor of the aqualung and the Nikonos underwater camera
Christopher Cockerell
(1910-1999)
British
hovercraft
Willem Johan Kolff
(1911-xxxx)
Dutch
artificial kidney hemodialysis machine
Alan Turing
(1912-1954)
British
the Turing machine
Otto Wichterle
(1913-1989)
Czech
invented modern contact lenses
Hedy Lamarr
(1913-2000)
Austria and American
Spread spectrum radio
Peter Petroff
(1919-2004)
Bulgaria
digital wrist watch heart monitor - weather instruments
Gordon Gould
(1920-2005)
American
co-inventor of laser
Paul Winchell
(1922-2005)
American
the artificial heart
Ralph Baer
(1922-xxxx)
German/American
the home video game console
Jack Kilby
(1923-2005)
American
patented the first integrated circuit
Stephanie Kwolek
(1923-xxxx)
American
Kevlar
Bette Nesmith Graham
(1924-1980)
American
Liquid Paper
Louis R. Vitullo
(1924-2006)
United States
Developed the first "sexual assault evidence kit"
Douglas Engelbart
(1925-xxxx)
American
computer mouse
John George Kemeny
(1926-1992)
Hungarian
co-inventor of BASIC
Erna Schneider Hoover
(1926-xxxx)
American
computerized telephone switching system
Jun-Ichi Nishizawa
(1926-xxxx)
Japanese
Optical communication system - SIT/SITh (Static Induction Transistor/Thyristor) - PIN diode - Laser diode
Lewis Urry
(1927-2004)
Canadian
long-lasting alkaline battery
Yoshiro Nakamatsu
(1928-xxxx)
Japanese
Floppy disk (world record holder for over 3000 patented inventions)
Spede Pasanen
(1930-2001)
Finland
The ski jumping sling
Robert Moog
(1934-2005)
American
the Moog synthesizer
James Fergason
(1934-xxxx)
American
improved liquid crystal display
Avram Hershko
(1937-xxxx)
Hungarian
Ubiquitin
Sumio Iijima
(1939-xxxx)
Japanese
nanotubes
Haakan Lans
(1942-xxxx)
Swedish
STDMA datalink (Self organising Time Division Multiple Access) - colour computer graphics
William H. Dobelle
(1943-2004)
United States
first functioning artificial eye
Erno Rubik
(1944-xxxx)
Hungarian
Rubik's cube - Rubik's Magic and Rubik's Clock
Andreas Pavel
(1945-xxxx)
German
the walkman
Isidor Sauers
(1948-xxxx)
Austrian/American
inventor of a process for measuring the degradation of SF6 in high-voltage systems
Charles Simonyi
(1948-xxxx)
Hungarian
Hungarian notation