IEEE Spectrum October, 2016 - 56

cal companies, electric utilities and
equipment suppliers, building materials firms, and even-according to Johnson-tobacco companies. But the timing
was bad; other microelectronics firms,
such as rCA, were selling off their solar
energy divisions to oil companies, usually for cut-rate prices. Kilby and company couldn't find a partner for tIses.
By september 1983, tI's patience and
money had run out, and the program
was canceled.

ilby was crushed. According to Kilby's friend and biographer ed
millis, the cancellation of tIses
"was a tough blow," especially as it followed not long after the death of his
mother in 1980 and his wife in 1981:
"the steady stream of inventions that
he logged in his notebooks had ceased
during the latter part of the solar
energy program, and never started
again" after tIses was canceled. Kilby
quit tI for good and settled down to
serve on boards and committees and
to collect awards: "Jack the Giant Killer
Inventor," millis wrote, "seemed to be
content to hang up his slide rule."
With that, Project Illinois disappeared. today, it's an almost-forgotten
coda to the career of a legendary engineer. the basic idea behind the technology does still come up from time
to time. In fact, while researching this
article I was contacted by a team at a
major technological institute because
they noticed we had both been looking
at the Kilby papers at southern methodist university, in Dallas-myself as a
historian, they as technologists looking
to revive the system.
What should we make of Kilby's great
disappointment? Does it tell us anything about alternative energy or high
technology in general? maybe. It's possible that the tIses system had flaws
that justified its cancellation. But plenty
of other solar energy projects were canceled at the same time. It seems likely
that the solar bust of the early '80s
killed at least some technologies that,
with further development, could be
competitive today.

high tech, especially in the united
states, often proceeds in booms and
busts that can inhibit development over
the longer term. surviving those busts
depends on a long-range vision and
significant investment. But Kilby and
tI's arguments for Project Illinois were
grounded in the economic climate of
the moment, and that justification faltered when the price of oil dropped. It
didn't help that they pitched the project to the national security community, which was more receptive toward
nuclear energy. A more long-range
vision, motivated perhaps by a concern for the environment or the desire
to build a more diverse and thus resilient portfolio of energy sources, might
have resulted in slower development
but more stable support from both public and private sources.
It may also be that microelectronics
is a poor analogy for other technologies. Kilby and tI believed that their
expertise in manufacturing chips from
silicon would translate easily to manufacturing power systems that relied on
silicon. they believed that their experience with the Department of energy
would be just as collegial and productive as it had been with the Department
of Defense. And they believed that their
experience with consumer markets for
calculators and pedagogical toys would
translate to selling durable goods for
homes. none of those ideas proved
valid. that's not to say that people who
know something about integrated circuits can't or shouldn't reinvent themselves as experts in solar power. But it
does show that reinvention is tough.
the prospects for solar power look
much better now than they did in 1983.
solar cell efficiencies are higher, and
costs are much lower. enthusiasm for
solar is today buoyed by widespread
anxieties about sustainability and
climate change. history won't repeat
itself here-solar's future will be different from its past. But we can use
stories like Kilby's to help us plot the
best path forward over the long term-
whether solar's short-term outlook is
cloudy or bright. ■

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum October, 2016