It’s always sad to hear about someone passing on. But it is even more unfortunate bad to hear about someone passing on who was part of something so pivotal in the world of technology.

Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit ushered in the modern electronics age and made possible the microprocessor, has died after a battle with cancer.

Kilby died Monday at age 81 at his Dallas home, said Texas Instruments Inc., where he worked for many years.

Before the integrated circuit, electronic devices relied on bulky and fragile circuitry, including glass vacuum tubes. Afterward, electronics could become increasingly more complex, reliable and efficient: powering everything from the iPod to the Internet.

During his first year at Texas Instruments, using borrowed equipment, Kilby built the first integrated circuit into a single piece of semiconducting material half the size of a paper clip. Four years later in 1962, Texas Instruments won its first major integrated circuit contract, for the Minuteman missile. [Read the rest]