So instead, I'd like to note that this week marks the 50th birthday of the integrated circuit, the essential building block of all consumer electronics. Consider this the blog-reading equivalent of eating your vegetables -- it's good for you.

History will remember Jack Kilby as father of the computer chip, but what he actually invented was the first integrated circuit. For such a critical technology, the actual specifics of integrated circuitry aren't widely appreciated. Basically, an integrated circuit is a construction of electronic components in which semiconductor devices (transistors and diodes) and passive devices (capacitors and resistors) are built into a single unit of material -- usually silicon. Kilby's invention was the first circuit in which at least one element was contained within the substrate itself -- a monolithic integrated circuit. (Researcher Robert Norton Noyce, working independently of Kilby, also received a patent on the integrated circuit in 1959. He went on to found a little company called Intel.)

As the technology was developed--and since there are no interconnecting wires in an integrated circuit--it became possible to radically miniaturize circuitry. In the 1970s, large-scale integration (LSI) put thousands of transistors and other components on a silicon chip three mm square. Very large-scale integration (VLSI), developed in the 1980s, made possible the microchip as we know it today, and put tens of millions of components on a chip less than two centimeters square. The rest is history.

In short, integrated circuits are very small, very fast, require relatively little power, and can be manufactured cheaply. Thanks to Kilby's invention, electronic systems that would otherwise be impractical are now ubiquitous. Bear this all in mind next time you hit shuffle on that iPod.

Now go forth in humility and gratitude, young people. 

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