Jack Kilby, a Texas Instruments engineer, is credited with 60 patents. Of those, the integrated circuit - patent filed in 1959 - was probably the most influential. The integrated circuit (IC) allowed transistors to be mass produced, and connected on a single chip. The IC led to the invention of the handheld calculator in 1967, capable of basic computing and mathematical functions, and made use of a slide rule obsolete. Kilby was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for the integrated circuit.
Source: NobelPrize.org, Texas Instruments
