Before smart missiles and iPhones, electronic devices choked on the hefty tubes required to connect disparate transistors. Then, in 1959, an engineer from Kansas named John St. Clair Kilby figured out how to put all the parts of a circuit on a small slab of impure silicone. Enter the microchip. Everything was compressed, and the \[…\]

wired.com: Review: ‘1959: The Year Everything Changed’