Jack Kilby, the man that invented the microchip in 1958, passed away on Monday in Dallas, Texas after fighting cancer. He was 81 years old.

The man is remembered quite fondly by those who knew him, as well as by the world as a whole. It is certainly hard to imagine what the world would be like today if there were no microchips.

“Without it, there could be no personal computer, no mobile phone, no space program, no Internet, no pacemakers or PlayStations,” Dean Takahashi of Mercury News quoted T.R. Reid of the Washington Post as writing back in 2000. “The integrated circuit has changed the daily life of the world as fundamentally as did the light bulb, the telephone and the horseless carriage.”

2000 was the year that Mr. Kilby won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work, though his technology was used around the world for decades before that. Takahashi writes:

Kilby became a well-known figure in Silicon Valley because his company tangled with Fairchild Semiconductor.

The two companies battled each other for more than a decade for the right to claim invention of the integrated circuit. Kilby’s handwritten lab notes, where he noted he could let a chip be the prime connector in an electronic circuit, was a principal exhibit in the legal proceedings. They reached a settlement and a kind of detente. Kilby was recognized as the inventor of the chip, while Noyce was recognized as the pioneer who made it practicable.

Kilby was an engineer with Texas Instruments, from where he retired in 1970. Kilby continued to serve as a consultant after his retirement, and was a professor at Texas A&M University.

Many have compared Jack Kilby to the likes of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. The world will remember him and his accomplishments for a long time to come.

Chris is a staff writer for webproworld. Visit webproworld for the latest ebusiness news.