DNA chips, or photolithographic nucleic acid microarrays, had a transformative effect on post-genomic genetic analysis. Their means of fabrication also shepherded in an era of high-throughput / combinatorial chemistry that had a major impact on discovery in chemistry and allied fields (genetics, medicinal chemistry, others). As an industrially developed technology, some aspects of their creation have been more obscure than they might be for breakthroughs emerging from academia. A variety of narratives have been put forth concerning the circumstances of their invention. This is a first-person account from one of the named inventors of a widely-adopted microarray technology about how this invention arose.