This ramble is dedicated to Jack Kilby, one of the most important inventors of our time.
While the three mile route around the Texas Instruments campus in Dallas bordering Richardson is not a very interesting one unless you particularly like roaming around highway infrastructure and secured business campuses, the amount of interesting things that have happened within this three mile radius is astounding.
Much of the route around the Texas Instruments campus is on desolate side-streets of busy highways.
The most important invention that has come out of this campus and likely Dallas if not Texas at large is the integrated circuit. The microchip. An electronic component that allows for complex electronic circuitry in small packages. The microchip is pervasive and is likely in nearly every electronic device you own and interact with on a daily basis.
Back in 1958, Jack Kilby was a recent hire of Texas Instruments. The company at the time had a policy of a required two-week summer vacation. But Jack hadn't been there long enough to earn this vacation time. So while everybody else was out on break, he spent his peace and quiet working on the tyrrany of numbers problem.
Computers at the time could be designed to do anything, but quickly grew in size by the miles and miles of wiring required to connect components together. Jack's thought was that you could get rid of the wires entirely by making all of the components out of the same material (germanium) and carving them into one block of material, thereby eliminating the wiring entirely. He took the tyranny of numbers to one.
And like most important inventions, there is usually more than one person in the world who are simultaneously inventing the same thing. In this case, it was Bob Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor who hit on basically the same idea. It was his silicon version and associated fabrication techniques that made the integrated circuit practical.
To further add to the historical perspective of this invention, without Jack Kilby and Bob Noyce and their integrative circuit, Jack Kennedy's promise of going to the moon wouldn't have been possible. Their invention allowed for the installation of a computer into the nose of a rocket – one that made the enabled astronauts to find their way to the moon.
Now, let's get to the route itself.
The TI (Texas Instruments) campus sits on the northeast corner of Interstate 635 and U.S. Route 75, otherwise known as 635 and 75 in Dallas. As I found out during this hike, it's approximately three miles around a bunch of infrastructure. The most interesting part of the route was a creek that I largely ignored. My goal was to do three miles in under an hour with 20 pounds in my rucksack, and exploring the creek in this area would have prevented me from achieving this goal.
The creek did look interesting though, so I've made a note to explore it another time. It looked as if there is a path along it – possibly some form of erosion control, but I'll never known unless I go exploring.
The amount of people on the street in this area at this time are few and far between. There were a couple of people asking for money on the service road of 75 and Midpark Rd, one on the corner holding up a sign, and another kneeling behind a tree, furiously working at something unknown. While curiosity is a great trait, sometimes it's best to just keep moving with your head on straight.
As for other people out on the street, there was a lady that I came across at the corner store ... and then another walking in the business park, and another individual within the TI complex whom I saw walking to his car.
In an area where you are constantly surrounded by hundreds of people, it feels desolate and lonely. Life exists inside the campus within business hours I'm sure, but is otherwise empty. Everybody else in the area is there for but a moment, quickly speeding by, isolated in contraptions of metal and plastic with loads of integrated circuits aiding in the production of useful information and entertainment.
Some areas of the route weren't very accessible, and required a bit of exploration to get through to the other side.
The best people moment was when I was in the business park, walking next to the buildings. Two gentlemen were headed towards one of the buildings. We smiled and said hi to one another. And honestly, that was the best moment of the hour. It's amazing how such a simple act of human connection provides so much joy.
If you have it in you – say hi – interact with others. Sometimes it's all that's needed to make their day, and yours, too.
Before I take off, I'd like to make note of the lack of beneficial, native plants used in landscaping the area by TI and presumably TxDOT. As I see in so many areas throughout Dallas, what was once a beautifully intense diversity of native prairie plants has become either a sad display of tightly mowed weeds, or an aesthetically pleasing array of plants that do very little for local habitat. I would love to see the prairie restored in as many areas as possible. And I would love to see native plants used instead of whatever the nursery trade is currently pushing. Much, much more on this in future posts.
Until then, ramble on? Ramble around? Insert cheesy tagline here.