You're looking at the first integrated circuit. The heart of every gadget and computer around you. This crude blob of components and germanium was created by Nobel Prize winner and Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby. But it wasn't his idea.
The original idea was formulated by someone who never got the Nobel Prize, a radar technician and electrical engineers born in Yorkshire, England, in 1909. After working at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, he came up with the idea of the integrated circuit, which he presented on May 7, 1952 at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C.
The Prophet of the Integrated Circuit—as he was later called—never materialized his theory, but Kilby did. He created what you are seeing above, which got perfected with the help of one of the co-founders of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, Robert Noyce. [Wired]