Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby spent the summer of 1958 working on a tiny invention he thought might find its way into some electronic devices.

On Friday, Sept. 12, that year, he showed it to the world. He called it an integrated circuit. Most people know it today as a computer chip.

It was the first time anyone had combined all the parts of an electronic circuit onto a single piece of silicon. The integrated circuit made it possible for firms such as Intel INTC, IBM IBM and Texas Instruments TXN to mass-produce electronic components in a Henry Ford-like fashion.

"It changed the world in ways that nobody, including Jack Kilby, could have imagined at the time," TI Vice President Mark Dennison said.

New Lab Honors Inventor

Fifty years after the landmark debut, TI will unveil a new 15,000-square-foot research facility in Dallas named in honor of Kilby, who died in June 2005.

Kilby Labs, which will take up space in an existing TI building and house up to 100 design engineers, will foster exciting new uses for chips, the company says.

Heading up the lab will be Ajith Amerasekera, chief technology officer for TI's application-specific chip unit. Amerasekera, who joined TI in 1991, holds 28 patents himself.

One thing most people don't know about Kilby is his perseverance in seeing his inventions change the market, said Charles Phipps, who shared an office with Kilby when he was designing his integrated circuit and would later sell them. Phipps is now a partner with leading venture firm Sevin Rosen Venture Funds.

"He was very focused and passionate about putting his inventions into practice," Phipps said. "He pursued them to make sure they were successful."

Kilby stayed with TI's IC program for about six years after the invention, helping bring it to market.

"Today, he would be classified as an entrepreneur," Phipps said. "He wanted to see it succeed and he worked on various aspects of the business to make it happen."

Chip-industry legend Carver Mead says most people still don't realize the magnitude of what Kilby did, along with Intel co-founder Robert Noyce.

Separately, Noyce came out with a similar integrated circuit about six months after Kilby's invention.

"It was the beginning of the biggest revolution in human history," Mead said.

Mead wrote a seminal textbook on chip design, "Introduction to VLSI Systems." He also coined the phrase "Moore's Law" to describe Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's maxim that companies can double the number of transistors on a chip every 12 months.

Crossing The Divide

"The integrated circuit created a new age," Mead said. "We were in the industrial age. Today we're in the information age. Their inventions did that. They allowed us to cross the divide from the industrial age to the information age."

Mead noted that most people give both Kilby and Noyce credit for inventing the integrated circuit.

Kilby created the basic pattern and showed the first, rough working IC. Noyce's device refined Kilby's design and, arguably, was the first to truly integrate all of a chip's elements onto a single piece of silicon.

For his efforts, Kilby won the inventors' equivalent of racing's "Triple Crown": the Nobel Prize in physics, the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology.

"What Kilby did was a great step. It did set the stage for what Noyce did later," Mead said. "I think the sharing of the credit is appropriate."

Today, chips power everything from computers and cell phones to seemingly low-tech devices such as refrigerators, toasters and toys.

Mead and many other observers believe that the use of integrated circuits will keep multiplying, though at a slower pace than in the industry's early, frenetic days.

Gartner forecasts chip sales of $285 billion this year. The firm expects that to grow to $353 billion in 2012. According to SIA figures, chip sales grew to $256 billion last year from $3.4 billion in 1976 .

The Semiconductor Industry Association trade group also noted the milestone, marveling at the way Kilby connected a transistor to other components on a sliver of germanium less than an inch long.

"Kilby's invention was simplicity itself," SIA President George Scalise said in a statement.