DALLAS -- Jack Kilby, whose invented the integrated circuit in 1958 and later shared in the Nobel Prize, died Monday of cancer. He was 81.

At Texas Instruments in 1958, Kilby built the first IC into a single piece of semiconducting material half the size of a paper clip. Kilby also co-invented the handheld electronic calculator that made TI a household name.

"TI was the only company that agreed to let me work on electronic component miniaturization more or less full time, and it turned out to be a great fit," Kilby wrote in an autobiography for the Nobel Committee in 2000, the year he won the prize for physics.

The Nobel committee lauded Kilby for having "laid the foundation of modern information technology."

Kilby was granted more than 60 U.S. patents in all. He was also a recipient of the National Medal of Science.

Kilby was a graduate in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin.