It seems as if there are, among the readings, three narrative threads that emerge in telling the story of the integrated circuit. The first is about innovation and the history of science the second economic and the third sociological. 

The invention of the integrated circuit is attributed to Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. In 1958, while working at Texas Instruments, Kilby created the first circuit whose resistors and capacitors were made from the same material and interconnected into a single semi-conductor. Two years later, in 1960, Robert Noyce improved on Kilby’s concept and created a circuit out of silicon. Noyce became the co-creator of Intel, and in the following decades the integrated circuit became instrumental in the proliferation of computers and computing technology. Kilby went on to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics.

The second part of the story about the integrated circuit is the about economics. While scientific discovery and advancements in technology created a new field of computing technology, the proliferation of computers did not occur until much later in the 1980’s. This was largely a result of the creation of the personal computer. As the integrated circuits improved and became more efficient and cheaper to produce, the integrated circuits became central to the massive economic expansion of the tech boom.

The third component of the story which also allowed for the profit margins that made the economics possible was the sociological story about the laborers who produced the integrated circuits. Beginning in 1965 Fairchild opened a plant in Shiprock New Mexico on a Navajo reservation. The location was chosen because of government subsidies as well the lack of unions and jobs in the Navajo community. The workers were paid very little given the skilled and precise nature of the work and made possible the massive profit margins of companies