Meanwhile, in California, another man had the same idea. In January of 1959, Robert Noyce was working at the small Fairchild Semiconductor startup company. He also realized a whole circuit could be put into a single chip. While Kilby had worked out the details of making individual components, Noyce thought of a much better way to connect the parts. The design was called a ""unitary circuit"." All that detail paid off because on April 25, 1961, the patent office awarded the first patent for an integrated circuit to Robert Noyce while Kilby's application was still being analyzed. Today, both men are acknowledged as having independently conceived of the idea.