scientific reputation. These talented young men - "the cream of electronics
research" - represented the "greatest collection of electronics genius ever
assembled". Their names were: Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Eugene Kleiner,
Jean Hoerni, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts.)
But however brilliant Shockley was, who was called a "marvelous intuitive
problem solver" and a "tremendous generator of ideas" by Robert Noyce, it
soon turned out that he was "hard as hell to work with", as his style was
"oppressive" and he "didn't have trust and faith in other individuals.")
When Shockley refused the suggestions of his eight engineers who wanted to
concentrate on silicon transistors, while their boss pursued research on
four-layer diodes, they decided to quit and start their own firm in 1957.
Within several months Shockley had to shut down his firm, since he had lost
his engineers, whom he called traitors and they are now known as "the
Traitorous Eight".
Although Shockley was not very successful with his firm in Palo Alto, he
"deserves credit for starting the entrepreneurial chain-reaction that
launched the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley,") since he had
brought together excellent scientists there like Robert Noyce without whom
there might never have been a Silicon Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula
at all. Or as M. Malone calls it, "Shockley put the last stone in place in
the construction of Silicon Valley.")
The father of one of those young men who left Shockley had contacts to a
New York investment firm, which sent a young executive named Arthur Rock to
secure financing for their new enterprise. Rock asked a lot of companies,
if they were interested in backing this project, but has not been
successful so far. The concept of investing money in new technology
ventures was largely unknown then, and indeed the term "venture capital"
itself wouldn't be coined until 1965") - by Arthur Rock, who should become
Silicon Valley's first and most famous venture capitalist later on.
Finally, due to Rock's efforts, the "Traitorous Eight" managed to obtain
financial support from industrialist Sherman Fairchild to start Fairchild
Semiconductor in 1957.
Fairchild Semiconductor was developed by Shockley's firm, and as the "still
existing granddaddy of them all") has itself spawned scores of other
companies in Silicon Valley: Most semiconductor firms' roots can be traced
back to Fairchild. The most famous ones of them are National Semiconductor,
Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); and many well-known Valley leaders
have worked at Fairchild, e.g. Charlie Sporck (National Semiconductor),
Jerry Sanders (AMD's founder), Jean Hoerni, and last but not least Robert
Noyce, who is considered the "Mayor of Silicon Valley") due to his
overwhelming success.
Robert Noyce was born in southwestern Iowa in 1927. His father was a
preacher in the Congregational Church and thus was "perpetually on the move
to new congregations, his family in tow.") When the Noyces decided to stay
at the college town of Grinnell, Iowa, for a longer period of time after
many years of moving, this place meant stability in young Bob's life and
thus would become his first and only real home, which he would later regard
as important for his eventual success.
After high school, Robert studied at Grinnell College. His physics
professor had been in contact with John Bardeen (one of the three inventors
of the transistor) and obtained two of the first transistors in 1948, which
he presented his students, including Bob Noyce. This aroused young Robert's
interest in semiconductors and transistors, which made him try to learn
everything he could get about this fascinating field of solid-state
physics.
Having graduated from Grinnell College he continued his studies at "the
premier school of science on the East Coast, MIT,") where he met famous
scientists like Shockley. He received his doctorate, and decided to work at
Philco until 1955, when he was invited by William Shockley to join a new
firm named "Shockley Semiconductor" in Santa Clara County - together with
seven other splendid scientists.
When the so-called "Shockley Eight" started a new venture with Fairchild
Semiconductor, Robert Noyce began "his own transformation from engineer to
business manager:") He was chosen to lead the new company as he seemed the
best to do this job.
Fairchild Semiconductor focused on building a marketable silicon transistor
applying a new manufacturing process called "mesa". Despite being the
smallest company in electronics business then, it attracted public
attention, particularly in 1958, when "Big Blue" - as dominant IBM is
nicknamed - ordered the "first-ever mesa silicon transistors") for memory
drivers in its computers.
This order contributed to the early success of Fairchild Semiconductor, and
indicated the beginning of a long relationship between IBM and Silicon
Valley.
Importance of military funding
Before switching over to the events at Intel, the aspect of military
funding is to be dealt with, since it has played an important role in the
early days of Silicon Valley.
During World War II, after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1942, a
great deal of the U.S. military forces and of the military production was
moved to California. Within a few years, California - formerly an
agricultural state - became a booming industrial state and the military
center of the USA.)
After the war, in the time of the Cold War and the arms race, the Korean
conflict, the "missile gap" and the space program, the Pentagon kept
ordering high-technology products from the armament factories in
California. Many companies established R&D departments and production
facilities in Santa Clara County near Stanford University, which provided
them with bright engineers and scientists, and were largely supported by
the Pentagon's demand for electronic high-tech products.
Examples for such firms are FMC, GTE, Varian Associates, Westinghouse, and
finally Lockheed, which opened its R&D department in the Stanford Research
Park in 1956, and started Lockheed Missiles and Space Company (LMSC) in
Sunnyvale. Lockheed's move to Northern California was crucial for the
developments in Santa Clara County; today the company is Silicon Valley's
largest employer with more than 24,000 people.)
Military funding for high-tech products was responsible for the early
growth of Silicon Valley in the 1950s and 1960s. The U.S. Department of
Defense was the biggest buyer of these products, e.g. its purchases
represented about 70 percent of the total production of ICs in 1965.)
While this share in chip demands has dropped to 8 percent today, the
Pentagon remains the biggest supporter of new technologies and accounts for
most of the purchases of the latest developments.
Intel Corp.
After the transistor and the integrated circuit, the invention of the
microprocessor in the early 1970s represents the next step towards the
modern way of computing, providing the basis for the subsequent personal
computer revolution.
It was at Intel where the first microprocessor was designed - representing
the key to modern personal computers. With its logic and memory chips, the
company provides the basic components for microcomputers. Intel is regarded
as Silicon Valley's flagship and its most successful semiconductor company,
owing its worldwide leading role to a perpetually high spending on research
and development (R&D).
Foundation in 1968
It all started in 1968, when Bob Noyce resigned as head of Fairchild
Semiconductor taking along Gordon Moore and Andy Grove, to embark on a new
venture. They had decided to leave the company, because they wanted "to
regain the satisfaction of research and development in a small, growing
company,") since Fairchild had become big with lots of bureaucracy work to
be done. Gordon Moore had belonged to the famous Shockley Eight and was in
charge of the R&D team at Fairchild. Andy Grove, a young Hungarian йmigrй,
who had earned a doctorate in chemical engineering at U.C. Berkeley, had
joined Fairchild in the early 1960s.
Intel (short for Integrated Electronics), a typical Fairchild spin-off, was
financially backed by venture capital from Arthur Rock, who had been in
contact with Noyce since 1957. The company was founded upon the idea of
integrating many transistors on a chip of silicon, after Noyce had
developed a new photochemical process. The three engineers initially
focused on building the first semiconductor chips used for computer memory,
which should replace the dominant memory storage technology at the time,
called "magnetic core". Intel's task was to drive down the cost per bit by
increasing the capacity of memory chips dramatically.
First products - Moore's Law
Within a year, Intel developed its first product - the 3101 Schottky
bipolar 64-bit static random access memory (SRAM), which was followed soon
after by the 1101. This chip (1101) was a 256-bit SRAM and had been
developed on Intel's new "silicon gate metal -oxide semiconductor (MOS)
process," which should become the "industry's process technology of
choice.") With the first two products, the young company started with 12
employees and net revenues of $2,672 in 1968, had already gained the
technological lead in the field of memory chips.
Intel's first really successful product was the 1103 dynamic random access
memory (DRAM), which was manufactured in the MOS process. Introduced in
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