On this date in 1959…

Jack Kilby filed for the first patent on an integrated circuit.

In the summer of 1958, Kilby was a newly employed engineer at Texas Instruments who did not yet have the right to a summer vacation. He spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design that was commonly called the “tyranny of numbers” and finally came to the conclusion that manufacturing the circuit components en masse in a single piece of semiconductor material could provide a solution. On September 12 he presented his findings to the management of Texas Instruments: he showed them a piece of germanium with an oscilloscope attached, pressed a switch, and the oscilloscope showed a continuous sine wave, proving that his integrated circuit worked and thus that he solved the problem. A patent for a “Solid Circuit made of Germanium”, the first integrated circuit, was filed on February 6, 1959. In addition to the integrated circuit, Kilby also is noted for patenting the electronic portable calculator and the thermal printer used in data terminals. In total, he held about 60 patents.

Link

Chewbacca charged

Reuters vis Yahoo! News
A Chewbacca impersonator was arrested after being accused of head-butting a Hollywood tour guide who warned the furry brown Wookiee about harassing two Japanese tourists, police said on Saturday.

“Nobody tells this Wookiee what to do,” “Chewie” from the “Star Wars” movies said before slamming his head into the guide’s forehead, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported.

The 6-foot, 5-inch-(1.96-metre-) tall 44-year-old man was charged on Friday with misdemeanor battery and later released on $20,000 bail, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

If you have nothing else to do…

Yahoo News
Germany’s Thomas Dold, 22, won the Empire State Building Run-up on Tuesday for the second year in a row.  Suzy Walsham, 33, of Singapore, won the womens competition.

A total of 290 runners from around the world, ranging in age from 18 to 77, competed in the 30th annual race up the famed skyscraper.

Dolds winning time of 10 minutes, 25 seconds was just over his 2006 time of 10 minutes, 19 seconds.

Installing Windows Vista — Thanks, Knight Rider !

Just a link. This one you have to see for yourself. (For those of you who don’t know — which is most of you, I’m sure —I run linux exclusively.)