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78-429: In 1957, the eight leading scientists resigned and became the core of what became Fairchild Semiconductor . Shockley Semiconductor never recovered from this departure, and was purchased by Clevite in 1960, then sold to ITT in 1968, and shortly after, officially closed. The building remained, but was repurposed as a retail store. By 2015 plans were made to demolish the site to develop a new building complex. By 2017,

156-481: A "betrayal". The eight who left Shockley Semiconductor were Julius Blank , Victor Grinich , Jean Hoerni , Eugene Kleiner , Jay Last , Gordon Moore , Robert Noyce , and Sheldon Roberts . In August 1957, they reached an agreement with Sherman Fairchild , and on September 18, 1957, they formed Fairchild Semiconductor . The newly founded Fairchild Semiconductor soon grew into a leader in the semiconductor industry. In 1960, it became an incubator of Silicon Valley and

234-406: A breakthrough, the design of the silicon computer chip. Much of the responsibility for learning how to mass-produce silicon chips, and building the machinery needed to do it, fell to Julius Blank and Eugene Kleiner as the only engineers in the group. At Fairchild, they were responsible for setting up the initial machine shop and assembly areas. What they were doing was fundamentally new: no one built

312-457: A consultant to new startup companies. He was the last of the original eight founding members to leave Fairchild. In 1978, Blank co-founded Xicor, where he was a member of its board of directors. The company's NOVRAM computer chip, a type of non-volatile memory, was designed so that systems could retain and save data in the event of power failure. In 2004, Xicor was acquired by Intersil Corp. for approximately US$ 529 million. In May, 2011,

390-466: A couple of months later by Kleiner. Blank was a Senior Staff Engineer from 1956 to 1957. The Blanks lived initially in Palo Alto, California , moving to Los Altos Hills, California in 1966. One of Blank's first assignments at Shockley was to build a crystal grower . Shockley had a number of ideas about how to build a crystal grower so as to eliminate contamination from oxygen in the quartz, but

468-450: A difficult prospect given silicon's high melting point. While work on the transistors continued, Shockley hit upon the idea of using a four-layer device (transistors are three) that would have the novel quality of locking into the "on" or "off" state with no further control inputs. Similar circuits required several transistors, typically three, so for large switching networks the new diodes would greatly reduce complexity. The four-layer diode

546-430: A factory, motivated him to learn more, and he attended a trade school as well. “I decided I needed to get a little bit more knowledge about practical matters and I wanted to become a machinist. While I was going to school I went to another school at night at Brooklyn Tech where I learned how to operate lathes, machines, read blueprints, and that kind of stuff. I got a job as a machinist after that." When he turned 18, he

624-529: A group of young Ph.D. graduates with the goal to develop and produce new semiconductor devices. While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his management of the group was authoritarian and unpopular. This was accentuated by Shockley's research focus not proving fruitful. After the demand for Shockley to be replaced was rebuffed, the eight left to form their own company. Shockley described their leaving as

702-724: A laboratory under the condition that its discoveries should be brought to mass production within two years. The new department of Beckman Instruments took the name Shockley Semi-Conductor Laboratories (the hyphen was conventional in those years). During 1955, Beckman and Shockley signed the deal, bought licenses on all necessary patents for $ 25,000, and selected the location in Mountain View , near Palo Alto, California . Though Shockley did recruit four PhD physicists, William W. Happ (from Raytheon Corporation ) George Smoot Horsley and Leopoldo B. Valdes (both from Bell Labs), and Richard Victor Jones (a fresh Berkeley graduate),

780-429: A leader of the semiconductor industry. At Fairchild, Blank was part of the team that established a "model for entrepreneurs for the rest of [the 20th] century": stock options, no job titles and open working relationships. The incubator of Silicon Valley , Fairchild was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of dozens of corporations such as AMD and Intel . In 1969, Blank decided to leave Fairchild and become

858-445: A limited set of templated circuits for computers and sold them initially only in the U.S. market, whereas Intersil focused on custom CMOS circuits with low power consumption and sold them worldwide. Last remained with Amelco and for twelve years served as Vice President of Technology at Teledyne. In 1982, he founded Hillcrest Press specializing in art books. After leaving Amelco, Roberts led his own business, and in 1973–1987 served as

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936-406: A lot of time outside our working hours. Most of the founders were married, busy starting their families and raising small children in addition to all the time and effort they were spending building Fairchild ... I am struck by what a remarkable time it was and what innovative opportunities. – Jay T. Last, 2010 In November 1957, The Eight moved out of Grinich's garage into a new, empty building on

1014-531: A meeting of the American Physical Society. Selection continued throughout 1956. Shockley was a proponent of social technologies (which later led him to eugenics ) and asked each candidate to pass a psychological test, followed by an interview. Blank, Last, Moore, Noyce, and Roberts started working in April–May, and Kleiner, Grinich, and Hoerni came during the summer. By September 1956,

1092-514: A period of 20 years, 65 different companies were started by 1st or 2nd generation teams that traced their origins in Silicon Valley to Shockley Semiconductor. In 2014, Tech Crunch revisited Don Hoefler 's 1971 article , claiming 92 public companies of 130 descendant listed firms were then worth over US$ 2.1 Trillion. They also claimed over 2,000 companies could be traced back to Fairchild's eight co-founders. Shockley never managed to make

1170-423: A professor position for Shockley and replacing him in the lab with a professional manager. Beckman refused, believing that Shockley could still improve the situation, later regretting this decision. In June 1957, Beckman finally put a manager between Shockley and the team, but by then seven key employees had already made their decision. At the last minute they were joined by Noyce. Roberts persuaded him to attend

1248-464: A series of decisions that supported Shockley. Fed up, the group broke ranks and sought support from Fairchild Camera and Instrument , an Eastern U.S. company with considerable military contracts. In 1957, Fairchild Semiconductor was started with plans for making silicon transistors. Shockley called the young scientists the " traitorous eight " and said they would never be successful. The eight later left Fairchild and started companies of their own. Over

1326-463: A small building. Shockley, not trusting his employees, was sending their reports to Bell Labs for double-checking. At some point, he sent the entire lab for a lie detector test, though everyone refused. The team started losing its members, starting with Jones, a technologist, who left in January 1957 due to a conflict with Grinich and Hoerni. Noyce and Moore then stood on different sides: Moore led

1404-503: A small commercial lot in nearby Mountain View in 1956. Initially he tried to hire more of his former workers from Bell Labs, but they were reticent to leave the east coast, then the center of most high-tech research. Instead, he assembled a team of young scientists and engineers, some from other parts of Bell Laboratories, and set about designing a new type of crystal-growth system that could produce single-crystal silicon boules , at that time

1482-698: A solution in the planar technology of Hoerni proposed on December 1, 1957. In the spring of 1958, Hoerni and Last were spending nights on experiments with the first planar transistors. The planar technology later became the second most important event in the history of microelectronics, after the invention of the transistor, but in 1959 it went unnoticed. Fairchild announced the transition from mesa to planar technology in October 1960. However, Moore refused to credit this achievement to Hoerni, and in 1996 even attributing it to unnamed Fairchild engineers. In 1959, Sherman Fairchild exercised his right to purchase shares of

1560-583: A sponsor in Raytheon , but Raytheon discontinued the project after a month. In August 1955, Shockley turned for advice to the financier Arnold Beckman , the owner of Beckman Instruments . Shockley needed one million dollars (1 million dollars in 1955 is about 11 million in 2023). Beckman knew that Shockley had no chance in the business, but believed that Shockley's new inventions would be beneficial for his own company and did not want to give them to his competitors. Accordingly, Beckman agreed to create and fund

1638-604: A trustee of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute . Amelco, after numerous mergers, acquisitions, and renaming, became a subsidiary of Microchip Technology . In 1972, Kleiner and Tom Perkins from Hewlett-Packard founded the venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers , which has been involved in the creation and/or funding of Amazon.com , Compaq , Genentech , Intuit , Lotus, Macromedia, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and dozens of other companies. Kleiner later wrote that his goal

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1716-529: A variety of positions during the war, gaining considerable experience in the practicalities of general engineering. In 1946 he returned home, where he completed his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the City College of New York , financed by the G.I. Bill . Blank worked as an engineer at Babcock & Wilcox in Barberton, Ohio , from 1950 to 1951, making large steam boilers for

1794-641: A while. We had a facility in Australia as well and two in Mexico, one in Tijuana and one in Mexico City." Julius Blank, 2008. Blank was aware of the challenges of starting up a business in another country, both socially and physically. "When we landed we had somebody we could talk to that spoke the language... that lived there, so we weren't just coming in out of the blue. That was very helpful, and that

1872-504: Is now called the Shockley diode . Shockley became convinced that the new device would be just as important as the transistor, and kept the entire project secret, even within the company. This led to increasingly paranoid behavior; in one famed incident he was convinced that a secretary's cut finger was a plot to injure him and ordered lie detector tests on everyone in the company. This was combined with Shockley's vacillating management of

1950-816: The California Historical Society in San Francisco gave the Legends of California Award to Blank, 85, and other founders of Fairchild Semiconductor. In 2011, Blank lived in a retirement center across the street from the old Fairchild headquarters at 844 Charleston Road in Palo Alto , where he used to have his office. The site is now a California Historical Landmark . Blank died on September 17, 2011, in Los Altos Hills, California . His wife, Ethel, an art curator, had died previously in 2008 after nearly 60 years of marriage. He

2028-507: The " traitorous eight ", left to form the influential Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. Blank indicated that he personally had not had problems with Shockley, but that Shockley's treatment of others was disturbing. Management difficulties accelerated after Shockley won the Nobel Prize: "He began to travel around the world rather extensively... And he would come back with new ideas and new projects, and we never really got to finish

2106-542: The "leaders among equals". The group immediately set a clear goal to produce an array of silicon diffusion mesa transistors for digital devices, utilizing the research results of Bell Labs and Shockley Labs. Moore, Hoerni and Last led three teams working on three alternative technologies. The technology of Moore resulted in a higher yield of operational n-p-n transistors, and in July–September 1958, they went into mass production. The release of p-n-p transistors of Hoerni

2184-447: The "traitorous eight", though it is not known who coined the term. Shockley could never understand the reasons for this defection. After that time, he never talked to Noyce again, but continued to follow the work of "The Eight". He also combed through all records left by The Eight, basing patents, held as Shockley Labs' intellectual property, on any important ideas. (Technically, in accordance with U.S. law, those patents were issued to

2262-432: The border of Palo Alto and Mountain View. Their starting salaries ranged from $ 13,800 to $ 15,600 per year. Hodgson, who headed the board of directors, suggested Noyce as the operational manager of the company, but Noyce refused. Fairchild, knowing Noyce's personality, also opposed his leadership. Regardless of the will of Fairchild, Noyce, and Moore, who were responsible for the research and production, respectively, became

2340-430: The company and returned to teaching at Stanford. In 1969, IT&T , the new owners of Shockley Labs, moved the company to Florida. When the staff refused to move, the lab ceased to exist. We were all focused on the single goal of producing our first product, a double diffused silicon mesa transistor ... We were all very young (27 to 32), only a few years beyond our school days. We were a very compatible group and spent

2418-892: The company in Hong Kong and other countries. "We built new R&D facilities, we built new fabs in Mountain View, and then we had one in San Rafael, and we added one in Portland, and eventually had one in Toronto, but it wasn't a fab, it was just an assembly facility. And then we did Hong Kong because of the assembly action, and then Korea and then I used to travel a lot to Europe ... they were building facilities outside of Milan [Italy]. They were building them in England and Sweden and France and West Germany. So, we were busy for

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2496-556: The company's first home, a 14,000 square foot building at 844 Charleston Road, between Palo Alto and Mountain View. Little more than a shell, it lacked both plumbing and electricity. Kleiner and Blank were in charge of transforming the empty building into usable spaces for production, research and offices. In addition to mundane requirements like sewer and water, the work spaces required extra electrical power, air conditioning to afford some level of climate control during processing, and piping and venting of gases. Blank's experience during

2574-531: The conflict with the Teledyne owners, for three years headed Union Carbide Electronics . In July 1967, supported by the watch company Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère (the predecessor of Swatch Group ) founded Intersil , the company that created the market for custom CMOS circuits. The circuits developed by Intersil for Seiko in 1969–1970 contributed to the rise of Japanese electronic watches. Intersil and Intel weren't competitors as Intel released

2652-483: The dissidents, whereas Noyce stood behind Shockley and tried to resolve conflicts. Shockley appreciated that and considered Noyce as his sole support in the group. In March 1957, Kleiner, who was beyond Shockley's suspicions, asked permission ostensibly to visit an exhibition in Los Angeles. Instead, he flew to New York to seek investors for a new company, and his parents, New York residents, assisted him. Kleiner

2730-401: The employer or the industry. Fairchild "alumni" can be found not only in electronics-related but also financial and public relations companies. Julius Blank Julius Blank (June 2, 1925 – September 17, 2011) was an American semiconductor pioneer. A member of the traitorous eight , he left Nobel -winning physicist William Shockley 's company to form Fairchild Semiconductor . Blank

2808-445: The equipment began to be available, but a lot of it was a little better, but not better enough to go ahead and bet the whole factory on it. So you would buy it in pieces until you became familiar with it... So they bought equipment, and a lot of it wasn't really built as rugged as it was required to be." Julius Blank, 2008. As the company expanded, Blank's role changed. He became responsible for establishing manufacturing facilities for

2886-605: The equipment that they needed. Blank and Kleiner were in charge of designing "the first assembly line for the basic building blocks of the electronic world", silicon chips, "from the ground up". "A brilliant mechanical engineer", Blank designed everything from furnaces and crystal growers to optical alignment and assembly equipment. Later on, as the semiconductor industry developed, it became easier to order equipment and materials. However, there continued to be an ongoing tension, trying to find robust equipment that could produce at high capacity. "Eventually, little by little, some of

2964-453: The field of solid state electronics. This led to the 1947 creation of the first transistor , in partnership with John Bardeen , Walter Brattain and others. Through the early 1950s a series of events led to Shockley becoming increasingly upset with Bell's management, and especially what he saw as a slighting when Bell promoted Bardeen and Brattain's names ahead of his own on the transistor's patent. However, others that worked with him suggested

3042-408: The first comprehensive textbook on integrated circuits. He later co-founded and ran several companies developing industrial radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. Blank was the last of The Eight to leave Fairchild in 1969. He founded the financial firm Xicor specializing in innovative start-ups, and in 2004 sold it for $ 529 million. Hoerni headed Amelco until the summer of 1963 and, after

3120-411: The first dialing systems for connecting calls automatically without a human long-distance operator. One of the pieces of equipment involved was a card translator with an array of germanium photo transistors that routed calls in the switching system. Blank also worked as a troubleshooter for a plating room, where he gained practical experience in metal finishing and the use of acids and chemicals. Two of

3198-450: The first signs of management problems. In November 1965, the creators of integrated operational amplifiers Bob Widlar and David Talbert left for National Semiconductor . In February 1967, they were followed by five top managers who disagreed with Noyce. Noyce started litigation with shareholders and effectively removed himself from the operational management. In July 1967, the company became unprofitable and lost their leading position in

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3276-514: The first strong theoretical study of solar cells , developing the seminal Shockley–Queisser limit that places an upper limit of 30% efficiency on basic silicon solar cells. 37°24′18″N 122°06′39″W  /  37.4049544°N 122.1109664°W  / 37.4049544; -122.1109664 Traitorous eight The traitorous eight was a group of eight employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor . William Shockley had in 1956 recruited

3354-418: The four-layer diode a commercial success, in spite of eventually working out the technical details and entering production in the 1960s. The introduction of integrated circuits allowed the multiple transistors needed to produce a switch to be placed on a single "chip", thereby nullifying the parts-count advantage of Shockley's design. However, the company did have a number of other successful projects, including

3432-405: The goal of getting the business underway. "I remember the day that we finally got the floor tile laid in the back main room on which we were going to put all our lab equipment. And that night, Noyce and the rest of the guys came out and got barefoot and rolled their pants up and were swabbing the floors. I wish I had a picture of that." Julius Blank, 2008. The group's initial research had led to

3510-460: The hotel chain Intelco and took the name of Intel . Moore held senior positions at Intel until 1997 when he was named Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation. Noyce left Intel in 1987 to lead the non-profit consortium Sematech . He died suddenly in 1990, the first of The Eight. Grinich left Fairchild in 1968 for a short sabbatical and then taught at UC Berkeley and Stanford , where he published

3588-423: The lab at a time when it had several management problems. Despite the festivities, the atmosphere in the lab was unhealthy. Although Shockley was never diagnosed by psychiatrists, historians characterized Shockley's state of mind in 1956–1957 as paranoia or autism . All phone calls were recorded, and the staff was not allowed to share their results with each other, which was not feasible since they all worked in

3666-468: The lab had 32 employees, including Shockley. Each successful candidate had to negotiate his salary with Shockley. Kleiner, Noyce, and Roberts settled for $ 1,000 per month; the less-experienced Last got $ 675. Hoerni did not bother about his payment. Shockley set his own salary at $ 2,500 and made all salaries accessible to all employees. The members of the future traitorous eight were aged between 26 (Last) and 33 (Kleiner), and six of them held PhDs. Hoerni

3744-748: The location provided limited enticement for new employees. The vast majority of semiconductor-related companies and professionals were based on the East Coast, so Shockley posted ads in The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune . Early respondents included Sheldon Roberts of Dow Chemical , Robert Noyce of Philco , and Jay Last , a former intern of Beckman Instruments. The newspaper campaign brought some three hundred responses, and fifteen people, including Gordon Moore and David Allison, Shockley himself recruited at

3822-409: The market to Texas Instruments. In March 1968, Moore and Noyce decided to leave Fairchild and again, as nine years prior, turned to Arthur Rock. In the summer of 1968, they founded NM Electronics . Blank, Grinich, Kleiner, Last, Hoerni, and Roberts set aside the past disagreements and financially supported the company of Moore and Noyce. A year later, NM Electronics bought the trade name rights from

3900-782: The mass production of diffusion bipolar transistors, but then set up a "secret project" on Shockley diodes, and in 1957 stopped all works on bipolar transistors. The reasons for this turn are unknown. According to Beckman's biographer, Shockley regarded his diode as an interesting scientific problem, and chose it, neglecting Beckman's commercial interests. Bo Lojek, based on the archives of Shockley, believes that Shockley Labs never worked on bipolar transistors; that Shockley diodes were Shockley and Beckman's original target, for which Beckman Instruments received military R&D contracts; and that Shockley diodes could have found widespread use in telephony if Shockley had improved their reliability. Historians and colleagues generally agree that Shockley

3978-470: The matter. This conflict was the last straw: on January 31, 1961, Last and Hoerni left Fairchild and to head Amelco , the microelectronics branch of Teledyne . Kleiner and Roberts joined them after a few weeks. Blank, Grinich, Moore, and Noyce stayed with Fairchild. The traitorous eight split into two groups of four. From 1960–1965, Fairchild was the undisputed leader of the semiconductor market, both technologically and in terms of sales. Early 1965 brought

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4056-661: The meeting of the "California group", as they called themselves in the agreement with Fairchild. The meeting was held at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco and was attended by Rock and Coyle. These ten people became the core of a new company. Coyle, a ruddy-faced Irishman with a fondness for ceremony, pulled out 10 newly minted $ 1 bills and laid them carefully on the table. "Each of us should sign every bill", he said. These dollar bills, covered with signatures, he explained, would be their contracts with each other. Finding investors proved to be difficult. The US electronics industry

4134-487: The members of the traitorous eight. Jay Last recalled (in 2007) that this event happened too early and turned former partners into ordinary employees, destroying the team spirit. In November 1960, Tom Bay, the Vice President of Marketing at Fairchild, accused Last of squandering money and demanded termination of Last's project of developing integrated circuits. Moore refused to help Last, and Noyce declined to discuss

4212-421: The natural capabilities of silicon meant it would eventually replace germanium as the primary material for transistor construction. Texas Instruments had recently started production of silicon transistors (in 1954), and Shockley thought he could create a superior product. Beckman agreed to back Shockley's efforts in this area, under the umbrella of his company, Beckman Instruments . However, Shockley's mother

4290-480: The new companies of the 1960s were created for a quick (within 3–5 years) public sale of shares. Their founders built a business strategy based on the expectations of the investment banks. Another characteristic of Silicon Valley was the mobility of managers and professionals among companies. Partly because of Noyce, Silicon Valley developed a culture of openly denying the hierarchical culture of traditional corporations. People remained faithful to each other, but not to

4368-559: The new company, Fairchild Semiconductor, was divided into 1,325 shares. Each member of the traitorous eight received 100 shares, 225 shares went to Hayden, Stone & Co and 300 shares remained in reserve. Fairchild provided a loan of $ 1.38 million. To secure the loan, the traitorous eight gave Fairchild the voting rights on their shares, with the right to buy their shares at a fixed total price of $ 3 million. On September 18, 1957, Blank, Grinich, Kleiner, Last, Moore, Noyce, Roberts, and Hoerni resigned from Shockley Labs. They became known as

4446-412: The ones that we started with. And this got to be frustrating." Julius Blank, 2008. In August 1957 Julius Blank, Victor Grinich , Jean Hoerni , Eugene Kleiner , Jay Last , Gordon Moore , Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts reached an agreement with Sherman Fairchild of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation . On September 18, 1957, they formed Fairchild Semiconductor . Julius Blank found

4524-498: The parent of so many spin-offs appeared in Innovation Magazine in 1969. The spin-off companies, such as AMD, Intel, Intersil and restructured National Semiconductor, were different from those of the east coast and California's electronic companies established in the 1940s and 1950s. "Old Californians" like Beckman and Varian Associates did not trust Wall Street and kept control of their companies for decades, whereas

4602-583: The people Blank worked with at Western Electric were Dean Knapic and Eugene Kleiner . Knapic was approached by William Shockley to form an engineering group at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments , in California. Knapic recommended Blank and Kleiner, who were interviewed by Shockley in a restaurant at Newark Airport, between flights. In April 1956, Blank joined Shockley Semiconductor, followed

4680-596: The power industry. He then moved to Goodyear Aircraft , where he worked from 1951 to 1952 on a wide variety of research and design projects including aircraft propulsion, air ship fabrics, parachutes, and submarines. Because his wife Ethel wanted to move back to New York, they returned there in 1952. After their return, Blank found a job in manufacturing engineering at Western Electric in Kearny, New Jersey where he worked from 1952 to 1956. At Western Electric he worked on No. 4 toll crossbar switching equipment , used in

4758-678: The projects; sometimes he felt that getting the basic transistors into immediate production was paramount, and would de-emphasize the Shockley diode project in order to make the "perfect" production system. This upset many of the employees, and mini-rebellions became commonplace. Eventually a group of the youngest employees – Julius Blank , Victor Grinich , Jean Hoerni , Eugene Kleiner , Jay Last , Gordon Moore , Robert Noyce , and Sheldon Roberts – went over Shockley's head to Arnold Beckman, demanding that Shockley be replaced. Beckman initially appeared to agree with their demands, but over time made

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4836-413: The reason for these issues was Shockley's abrasive management style, and it was this reason that he was constantly passed over for promotion within the company. These issues came to a head in 1953 and he took a sabbatical and returned to Caltech as a visiting professor. Shockley struck up a friendship with Arnold Orville Beckman , who had invented the pH meter in 1934. Shockley had become convinced that

4914-401: The respective inventing employees.) In 1960, with the help of a new team, Shockley brought his own diode to serial production, but time had been lost, and competitors had already come close to the development of integrated circuits. Beckman sold the unprofitable Shockley Labs to investors from Cleveland. On July 23, 1961, Shockley was seriously injured in a car crash, and after recovery left

4992-635: The resulting equipment was elaborate and had several problems. Blank eventually built a conventional crystal grower based on the Czochralski process instead. Diffusion furnaces also had to be built, because existing laboratory furnaces did not meet the requirements of semiconductor production. They were too small, not well enough controlled, and not capable of being used for long periods of time. Vacuum evaporators for evaporating metals also needed to be more robust and readily controlled. Blank worked at Shockley Semiconductor until he and others, later dubbed

5070-419: The site was redeveloped with new signage marking it as the "Real Birthplace of Silicon Valley." William Shockley received his undergraduate degree from Caltech and moved east to complete his PhD at MIT with a focus on physics. He graduated in 1936 and immediately went to work at Bell Labs . Through the 1930s and '40s he worked on electron devices , and increasingly with semiconductor materials, pioneering

5148-415: The war and at Western Electric was helpful in dealing with these physical requirements. As they were readying the building itself, the founders were also ordering desks, lab benches and scientific equipment, and starting to build specialized equipment that they couldn't order: crystal growers , diffusion furnaces, vacuum evaporators, and optical lithography equipment for mask-making. Everyone worked toward

5226-447: The work on a field effect transistor for Beckman Instruments. Shockley refused to work on bipolar transistors, which later was proven a strategic mistake. Because the work on Shockley diodes took so much effort the produced devices were commercial failures. According to Noyce and Moore, as well as David Brock and Joel Shurkin , the shift from bipolar transistors to Shockley diodes was unexpected. Shockley initially planned to work on

5304-567: Was a lesson that we learned everywhere. When you go some place, you'd better get some local people to help you." Julius Blank, 2008. "Lots of times they didn't bother to find out if you could do anything there. For example, is there a reliable source of power, water, sewerage, gases, chemicals...really basic elemental things? Not to talk about labor supply and trained technical help. You have to factor all of these things into it, and you neglect one at your peril, because it comes back to bite you." Julius Blank, 2008. Fairchild Semiconductor became

5382-482: Was a poor manager and businessman. From early childhood he was prone to outbursts of unprovoked aggression, which were suppressed only due to the internal discipline of his past working environment. He also tended to see rivals, even in his own subordinates. On November 1, 1956, it was announced that the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics would be awarded to Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain. The related public events of November–December overtired Shockley and took him away from

5460-413: Was aging and often ill, and he decided to live closer to her house in Palo Alto . Shockley set about recruiting his first four PhD physicists: William W. Happ who had previously worked on semiconductor devices at Raytheon , George Smoot Horsley and Leopoldo B. Valdes from Bell Labs, and Richard Victor Jones , a recent Berkeley graduate. The Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory opened for business in

5538-632: Was an experienced scientist and gifted manager, and, according to Bo Lojek , matched Shockley in intellect. Only Noyce was involved in semiconductor research, and only Grinich had experience in electronics. Throughout 1956, most members of the lab were assembling and tuning the equipment, and "pure scientists" Hoerni and Noyce carried out individual applied research. Shockley refused to hire technical staff, believing that his scientists should be able to handle all technological processes. After resettlement, he focused on fine-tuning Shockley diodes for mass production, and five employees, led by Noyce, continued

5616-460: Was born and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side , the youngest of three children of Jewish immigrants Charles and Gussie Blank. His father made musical-instrument cases and luggage, and also worked as a Russian translator. Julius Blank attended Erasmus Hall High School , graduating at 15. He began taking classes at City College of New York while working at various jobs. His first job, in

5694-405: Was concentrated in the east, and the California group preferred to stay near Palo Alto. In August 1957, Rock and Coyle met with the inventor and businessman Sherman Fairchild, founder of Fairchild Aircraft and Fairchild Camera . Fairchild sent Rock to his deputy, Richard Hodgson. Hodgson, risking his reputation, accepted the offer and within a few weeks completed all paperwork. The capital of

5772-673: Was delayed until early 1959. This created the Moore-Hoerni conflict at Fairchild: Moore ignored the contribution of Hoerni, and Hoerni believed that his work was unfairly treated. However, the Moore transistors formed the prestige of Fairchild Semiconductor – for several years, they beat all the competitors. In 1958, Fairchild mesa transistors were considered for the D-17B Minuteman I guidance computer, but they did not meet military standards of reliability. Fairchild already had

5850-405: Was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of dozens of corporations, including Intel and AMD . These many spin-off companies came to be known as "Fairchildren". In the winter of 1954–1955, William Shockley, an inventor of the transistor and a visiting professor at Stanford University , decided to establish his own mass production of advanced transistors and Shockley diodes . He found

5928-753: Was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army in World War II . He reported for active duty on July 5, 1943. After basic infantry training, he was placed in the Army Specialized Training Program . In April 1944, he was sent overseas, where he was injured in December 1944 during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest . He was subsequently transferred to the Air Corps to serve as a machinist for airplane parts to overhaul radial engines . He held

6006-407: Was supported by Blank, Grinich, Last, Roberts, Hoerni and Moore. Arthur Rock and Alfred Coyle from Hayden, Stone & Co. became interested in the offer, believing that trainees of a Nobel laureate were destined to succeed. As a last resort, on May 29, 1957, a group led by Moore presented Arnold Beckman with an ultimatum: solve the "Shockley problem" or they would leave. Moore suggested finding

6084-411: Was to geographically spread the venture financing. In May 2011, the California Historical Society gave the "Legends of California Award" to The Eight. Blank, Last, Moore, and Roberts' son Dave attended the event in San Francisco. In research, reporting, and popular lore related to Silicon Valley, the term "Fairchildren" has been used to refer to: One of the first articles to identify Fairchild as

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