50 years ago today, Texas Instrument’s Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit. It’s a crude conglomeration of just five components, but it was also proof that a circuit could be miniaturized by housing all of its components on one piece of semiconductor material, allowing all these parts to work together without laborious (and technologically infeasible) manual connections.

The integrated circuit itself was housed in a germanium strip on a glass slide, and it measured 7/16in by 1/16in.  It had a few protruding wires, and contained a single transistor, several resistors and a capacitor.

Wired article.