The Chip: The Untold Story of How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Changed the World

Edgar: Quite interesting story of how two pioneers independently arrived at the same idea.

Nice read overall and very well written

Germany on Apr 08, 2023

Stabile: History leapt ahead during the time Reid was creating the original version of this book, and this revision trips over some details of the technology that has been accelerating since before Kilby and Noyce’s arrival at the plate.

Lots of emphasis on bipolar device history and function, necessary to the story but a much smaller piece of the broader scope of a world today based almost entirely on field effect technology, for much the same reasons that Reid cites as the little recognized driver for the development of integrated devices.

Indeed, the first patents for solid state devices were for three terminal field effect constructs, back as far as 1926, long before bipolar constructs were significant outside the theoretical study of solid state properties.

The effect of the DARPA VLSI challenge that led directly to Lynn Conway and Carver Mead’s breakthrough methodology (still the basis of chip design today) specifically addressed another deeper “tyranny of numbers” that threatened to stall the pace of integrated circuit progress, the problem of keeping the organization and understanding of so many elements straight.

The task of soldering all those...

United States on Jan 04, 2023

Mauricio Yoary Gonzalez Martinez: El manejo de los antecedentes básicos del chip es fácilmente asimilable, el detalle de la descripción del funcionamiento de los fundamentos del chip fluye en una fácil lectura para cualquier principiante.

Mexico on Dec 10, 2022

Pankaj Kumar Saini: I found the book really easy to read and very informative.... It touches through the life of inventors and what they went through to create the modern world we love in. Scientific concepts are explained simply although not in deep....

India on May 27, 2020

Amazon Customer: Reid has succintly captured the story of two disparate individuals who tried to solve the problem of "tyranny of numbers" in their own way ; apart from sketching these two characters, he also provides some details on technology, the practical problems encountered, how govt organisations pitched in to assist the innovations - all are neatly captured and to the core. Hats Off !

India on May 22, 2017

Amazon Customer: This is a nice piece of industrial and technical history. It was interesting to see how people reacted to things back then when before chips and society evolved into so much more.

United Kingdom on Sep 10, 2014

Bas Vodde: The Chip is a smallish (300 pages) book about the history of the microchip which has lead to miniaturization of circuits that lead to the revolution of the personal computer. The book is easy to read (at times, perhaps too easy as it is lacking some technical details) and insightful. I've enjoyed reading the chip a lot.

The book consists of 11 different chapters, each covering an area in the history of the microchip. The first chapter starts with the invention of "the monolith idea" which is the concept that we integrate all the components on one circuit instead of wiring up different smaller and smaller components. Both Bob Noyce and Jack Kilby had this idea at around the same time and both of them are recognized as the inventor of the chip. The second chapter quickly introduces the history of electronics and the invention of the transistor... all the things that happened before before the monolith idea, the basis for the idea. Chapter 3 is the history of Jack Kilby and chapter 4 is the history of Bob Noyce (nicely done). Chapter five discusses the patent case about whether Noyce or Kilby is the first inventor and how this never really got resolved. Chapter 6 introduces...

United States on May 01, 2012