Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from how stuff Works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I am a senior writer with how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. I say that every show, and yet
Speaker 1: some people are still surprised to know there is a
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com. There is and explains how
Speaker 1: stuff works, not just technology, but all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever been curious how something works, check
Speaker 1: out our website. Chances are we've got some information about it. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to do another one of my wonderful episodes
Speaker 1: about the history of a big company in technology. And
Speaker 1: I use the word wonderful somewhat tongue in cheek because
Speaker 1: it's weird to toot one's own horn. But I genuinely
Speaker 1: enjoy researching these episodes because I always learned something that
Speaker 1: I didn't know before about companies that I'm really from.
Speaker 1: You're with from a product standpoint, but maybe not so
Speaker 1: much behind the scenes. That's certainly the case with today's topic. Intel. Now,
Speaker 1: Intel is a major player in the computers industry, obviously
Speaker 1: in the semiconductor and microprocessor industries. Big big deal. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to take this opportunity to kind of talk
Speaker 1: about the history of the company, how it developed over time,
Speaker 1: and sort of the contributions it has made to the
Speaker 1: industry of electronics and computers. Right, So, chances are, at
Speaker 1: some point or another in your life you've used a
Speaker 1: device that had a little sticker on it that said
Speaker 1: that there was Intel inside. The company is famous for
Speaker 1: producing the chips that make our computers and electronics so powerful.
Speaker 1: So they're famous for making the stuff that makes our
Speaker 1: other stuff work. But what is the actual story behind
Speaker 1: the company. Well, understand that we're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: something that I'm infamous for doing, which is that we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to go roll the clock back well before
Speaker 1: there ever was an Intel, Because I really do think
Speaker 1: that to have a true understanding of any subject, not
Speaker 1: just a company, but really anything, you need to go
Speaker 1: back quite a bit and get the foundation set before
Speaker 1: you start just spouting off facts. I could tell you
Speaker 1: that Intel was founded in the late nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: pick up from there, but without understanding the pathway that
Speaker 1: lad there, you don't have as full and appreciation, At
Speaker 1: least in my opinion, that's the case, certainly personally for me,
Speaker 1: that's the case. So we're gonna look at a couple
Speaker 1: of companies that preceded Intel to understand why there's an
Speaker 1: Intel in the first place, and we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: Traitorous Eight. There's treachery involved in this story, and we'll
Speaker 1: also talk about Moore's Law that's going to play a
Speaker 1: big part in this DISCUSSI and as well, because all
Speaker 1: of this is wrapped up in the birth of Intel,
Speaker 1: and it's a story of not just technology, but of people.
Speaker 1: And as we all know, people are complicated critters. We're
Speaker 1: capable of great and terrible things, and sometimes things that
Speaker 1: are both great and terrible at the same time. So
Speaker 1: today we're gonna look at some stories about people who
Speaker 1: made amazing contributions to us in the form of engineering,
Speaker 1: advancing science, understanding the physics of electronics at a deeper
Speaker 1: level that allowed us to create incredible gadgets. But we'll
Speaker 1: also learn some not so nice stuff, some things about
Speaker 1: people that were at least disturbing, if not worse. But
Speaker 1: much of our story is going to revolve around semiconductors.
Speaker 1: So as a refresher, a semiconductor is a class of
Speaker 1: material that has a much lower resistance to the flow
Speaker 1: of electrical current in one direction than it does in
Speaker 1: the other direction. If you listen to my episodes about
Speaker 1: the history of electricity, you remember about the concept of resistance, right,
Speaker 1: that's the tendency of any given material to resist the
Speaker 1: flow of electrons. So, if you have something that's a
Speaker 1: really good conductor, it tends to have a very low resistance.
Speaker 1: It allows electrons to move through fairly free freely. But
Speaker 1: something with a very high resistance, like a very very
Speaker 1: high resistance that's an insulator, it doesn't allow electrons to
Speaker 1: pass through nearly as easily. If you're able to take
Speaker 1: a conductor and you're able to lower the temperature near
Speaker 1: to absolute zero, it ends up becoming a superconductor, meaning
Speaker 1: that there's no resistance at all, and it allows electrons
Speaker 1: to pass through without any resistance. So resistance is this
Speaker 1: tendency to again resist the flow of electrons. It turns
Speaker 1: out that in some materials this is a variable where
Speaker 1: under one set of circumstances, electrons will flow through very easily,
Speaker 1: and under a different set of circumstances using that same material,
Speaker 1: electrons will not flow through nearly as easily. These are
Speaker 1: what we call semiconductors because sometimes they conduct and sometimes
Speaker 1: they do not. It can be useful to think of
Speaker 1: this as sort of like an inclined plane or a slide.
Speaker 1: If you have a marble and you let it roll
Speaker 1: down a slide, it does so easily with very little effort, right.
Speaker 1: You just have to move it so it hits that
Speaker 1: inclined plane and gravity does the rest of the work.
Speaker 1: To move the marble back up the slide, you have
Speaker 1: to put forth some effort. You have to push the
Speaker 1: marble up the slide, working against gravity to do so.
Speaker 1: Semiconductors are kind of similar, except we're talking about electrons,
Speaker 1: not not large macro objects like marbles. And it's not
Speaker 1: a perfect analogy, but it allows you to kind of
Speaker 1: understand what's going on now. A semiconductor's tendency to allow
Speaker 1: or prevent electricity from flowing through it can be altered
Speaker 1: in a few different ways, depending upon the material. So,
Speaker 1: for example, some semiconductor material will change its resistance if
Speaker 1: you introduce some impurities into it. This is called doping,
Speaker 1: where you strategically add in some of these impurities to
Speaker 1: change it from being say pure silicon, to dope silicon.
Speaker 1: And this would allow for the transfer of electrons in
Speaker 1: one direction more easily, Or you might be able to
Speaker 1: change the resistance of a semiconductor by applying a magnetic
Speaker 1: field to it, or there are other ways of changing
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned with superconductors, that's temperature. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different factors that can change the way
Speaker 1: a conductor conducts electricity, whether it's with little resistance or
Speaker 1: with a great deal of resistance. The first recorded use
Speaker 1: of the word semi conducting that I know of came
Speaker 1: from Alessandro Volta. And again, if you listen to those
Speaker 1: history of Electricity episodes, then you know that Volta was
Speaker 1: an eighteenth century philosopher and inventor who created an early
Speaker 1: battery called the voltaic pile. But as brilliant as Volta was,
Speaker 1: he did not actually lay down any theories about what
Speaker 1: semiconductors are or what was going on, largely because he
Speaker 1: did not have a full understanding of what electricity was. Remember,
Speaker 1: for for centuries people thought electricity was some form of fluid.
Speaker 1: They hadn't didn't have a full understanding of what it
Speaker 1: actually was. In the nineteenth century, you had Michael Faraday.
Speaker 1: He was another scientist and he noticed that silver sulfides
Speaker 1: electrical resistance would change at different temperatures. So he made
Speaker 1: this observation. If he changed the temperature of silver sulfide,
Speaker 1: the resistance would also change. Johan Hittorf, who was another
Speaker 1: science has published a study about temperature dependence of the
Speaker 1: electrical conductivity of certain materials, adding to more knowledge about
Speaker 1: the nature of semiconductors. Several scientists formulated theories about semiconductors
Speaker 1: and the factors that would cause them to change their
Speaker 1: resistance to electrical flow, but it wouldn't be until the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century that someone figured out how they could
Speaker 1: be used to solve what was becoming a very tricky problem. Now,
Speaker 1: initially this problem was all about signal amplification. Now, signals
Speaker 1: are very important in all sorts of different electronic applications,
Speaker 1: and often the signal that you generate may be very
Speaker 1: weak and you need to amplify it. You need to
Speaker 1: increase the amplitude of the signal in order for you
Speaker 1: to do something useful with it. Uh that it was
Speaker 1: certainly the case with telephone communication. In the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: a little company called A T and T was struggling
Speaker 1: with this because they were laying out a coast to
Speaker 1: coast network of telephone lines. They were allowing for transcontinental
Speaker 1: phone calls, but they needed to be able to boost
Speaker 1: the signal that went along the telephone lines so that
Speaker 1: the thing you heard on one end would be intelligible,
Speaker 1: so that if I'm talking in Atlanta and I want
Speaker 1: someone in San Francisco to hear me, the signal remains
Speaker 1: strong throughout the entire journey from Atlanta to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So they needed to figure out a way to amplify signals,
Speaker 1: and initially they were looking at using vacuum tubes. Now,
Speaker 1: A T and D was really interested in innovating in
Speaker 1: this space, largely because the company was starting to worry
Speaker 1: about its patents, and it purchased several patents from Alexander
Speaker 1: Graham Bell, who we attribute the creation of the telephone too,
Speaker 1: and those patents were what allowed A. T and T
Speaker 1: to maintain a strategic advantage over other potential competitors. But
Speaker 1: patents expect they expire after a while, so once they expire,
Speaker 1: that information isn't available for anyone to use without having
Speaker 1: to pay a license. So the patent allows you to
Speaker 1: see how how people are doing things, but it prevents
Speaker 1: you from following that same example unless you license the
Speaker 1: information from the patent holder. Well, once the patent expires,
Speaker 1: it's free game. So A T and T was looking
Speaker 1: at these patents expiring and they said, well, we really
Speaker 1: need to innovate in other spaces to maintain our competitive advantage.
Speaker 1: And you've heard me probably talk about A T and T.
Speaker 1: I did some episodes about the company not that long ago,
Speaker 1: and they were very good at maintaining their advantage for
Speaker 1: a really long time, even after they got broken up
Speaker 1: by the United States government. Well, they the company was
Speaker 1: so concerned about this they even brought Thomas Vale out
Speaker 1: of retirement, that was their former president of the company,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to really tackle this problem. And again,
Speaker 1: initially they started to use vacuum tubes as signal amplifiers.
Speaker 1: These were devices that were invented by a guy named
Speaker 1: Lee de Forest. And one day I will have to
Speaker 1: do a full episode about vacuum tube technology and exactly
Speaker 1: how it works, but it's a little outside the scope
Speaker 1: of this episode. Now, one thing you should know is
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes were not a perfect technology. They had a
Speaker 1: lot of drawbacks. They were delicate, they could burn out,
Speaker 1: so you'd have to replace them fairly regularly. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were also very large and bulky, so you could not
Speaker 1: have a small form factor for whatever device you were
Speaker 1: using that had vacuum tube amplifiers in it, And they
Speaker 1: generated a lot of heat, which in some applications is problematic.
Speaker 1: Now there's some things where people still love to use
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes as their signal amplifier. People who use amplifiers
Speaker 1: for musical instruments love, generally speaking, amplifiers that use vacuum tubes.
Speaker 1: They those are valued very highly in the musical field,
Speaker 1: but for something like long distance telephone calls, it was
Speaker 1: seen as sort of a band aid to the problem.
Speaker 1: And so the company A T and T was really
Speaker 1: interested in figuring out an alternative to these, and they
Speaker 1: tasked their research and development ARM to try and come
Speaker 1: up with something. That ARM was known as Bell Labs,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to find an alternative to vacuum tubes,
Speaker 1: something that could boost a signal similar to the tubes,
Speaker 1: but take up a fraction of the size and put
Speaker 1: out very little heat comparatively speaking. The team leader for
Speaker 1: this project at Bell Labs was a guy named William
Speaker 1: Bill Shockley. In a way, Shockley would become partly responsible
Speaker 1: for the foundation of Intel, but it wasn't because he
Speaker 1: was a founder of Intel. He wasn't. He was not
Speaker 1: among the co founders of Intel. However, you could argue
Speaker 1: that he was at least partly responsible for Intel ever existing.
Speaker 1: Shockley was born in London, England, but both his parents
Speaker 1: were American. His father was a mining engineer who had
Speaker 1: contract work in the UK, and so I had moved
Speaker 1: his family to the United Kingdom. His mother was one
Speaker 1: of the first women to graduate Stanford, and she held
Speaker 1: degrees in mathematics and art. Now, apparently the Shockley family
Speaker 1: was a group of curmudgeon lely folks. They were a
Speaker 1: little grouchy from all accounts. Uh. They might have had
Speaker 1: arrestibility as a family feature. His parents never seemed to
Speaker 1: be able to stay in one place for more than
Speaker 1: a year, so they moved around a lot, and Shockley
Speaker 1: himself would develop many of the same characteristics as his parents,
Speaker 1: being a little difficult to be around, which is probably
Speaker 1: a generous way of putting it. Now. Eventually, Shockley attended
Speaker 1: the California Institute of Technology or cal Tech back in
Speaker 1: nineteen and he majored in physics. He was apparently really
Speaker 1: quite the prankster over at cal Tech, supposedly, as pranks
Speaker 1: were the stuff of legend. I did not, however, look
Speaker 1: into those for this episode. Maybe in the future one.
Speaker 1: He pursued a doctorate at m I T in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, and then he became an apprentice to a
Speaker 1: man named Philip Morse, and as a result he got
Speaker 1: a job at Bell Labs. He gained a reputation as
Speaker 1: a brilliant and innovative problem solver. Now this is a
Speaker 1: bit of a tangent, but it's an example of his
Speaker 1: sense of innovation. Uh. He was one of the people
Speaker 1: who made an early design for a nuclear reactor. He
Speaker 1: actually partnered with a guy named James Fisk to work
Speaker 1: on this. They were trying to suss out how you
Speaker 1: could make a sustained nuclear reaction, and Shockley's idea was
Speaker 1: that you could use uranium and little chunks, and you
Speaker 1: could separate the chunks of uranium from each other using
Speaker 1: some other material, and the purpose of that material would
Speaker 1: be to slow down but not capture neutrons as they're
Speaker 1: given off by the uranium, and by doing that allowing
Speaker 1: the neutrons to hit other atoms of you two thirty
Speaker 1: five and thus generate more neutrons as the YOUTO thirty
Speaker 1: five would decay, and these new these neutrons would then
Speaker 1: move out to again uh impact other you too thirty
Speaker 1: five atoms and sustain the reaction so that you would
Speaker 1: just continuously have this release of radioactive energy. Now, their
Speaker 1: work would end up being classified by the US government,
Speaker 1: as this was during World War two and considered highly
Speaker 1: dangerous material. It turned out that the scientists who were
Speaker 1: working on the Manhattan Project we're concentrating on essentially the
Speaker 1: same thing that Fiskin and Shockley we're thinking about, except,
Speaker 1: of course, Shockley and fisk were mostly interested in a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor, whereas the Manhattan Project was all about a
Speaker 1: more uncontrolled nuclear reaction to create a bomb. But they
Speaker 1: were all working on similar things. They didn't have any
Speaker 1: knowledge of each other because the US government was very
Speaker 1: much concerned with keeping this stuff secret and safe from
Speaker 1: potential enemies, so they didn't know anything about each other's
Speaker 1: projects until after World War two had ended. Now, before
Speaker 1: the war, Shockley had actually worked with a guy named
Speaker 1: Walter Brittaine who together they were trying to create this
Speaker 1: alternative to vacuum tube technology, a solid state alternative to
Speaker 1: vacuum tube amplifiers. But while they were working on it,
Speaker 1: it didn't go anywhere. They couldn't create something that was
Speaker 1: actually working. Then the war happened and their attentions were elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But after the war, Shockley decided to try this again.
Speaker 1: They brought on another theorist over to Bell Labs named
Speaker 1: John Bardine now Bardein and Britain we're starting to work
Speaker 1: together closely to try and create this alternative vacuum tubes.
Speaker 1: And Shockley was the administrative leader for their team, but
Speaker 1: he was mostly working on his own, on his own
Speaker 1: little processes and inventions, so he would occasionally stop in
Speaker 1: see what the two were working on, give some guidance
Speaker 1: or maybe some suggestions, and then he would head off
Speaker 1: and work on his own some more so, he was
Speaker 1: not actually part of the team that on December six,
Speaker 1: ninety seven unveiled the first working transistor, a solid state
Speaker 1: alternative to vacuum tube technology. In staid that was Britain
Speaker 1: and Bardin who created that first point contact resist transistor,
Speaker 1: and that would become the foundation for the electronics industry.
Speaker 1: The transistor. That is not the point contact version, just
Speaker 1: the transistor in general. And I've done episodes about transistor,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to talk about it too much.
Speaker 1: But the reason our electronics are so small is because
Speaker 1: engineers developed the transistor. Otherwise we would still be dependent
Speaker 1: upon vacuum tubes, and that would really limit the types
Speaker 1: of technology we could have at our disposal because they
Speaker 1: would be so bulky and hot. Uh So it really
Speaker 1: did open up an enormous world of opportunity for really
Speaker 1: everyone ultimately, but especially a T and T early on
Speaker 1: now Shockley reportedly had a complicated reaction to the development
Speaker 1: of this first transistor. On one hand, he was really
Speaker 1: proud of his team. He was leading a team that
Speaker 1: had made a major scientific and engineering breakthrough with the
Speaker 1: invention of the transistor. But on the other end, he
Speaker 1: was a little disappointed and frustrated that he was not
Speaker 1: directly part of this team. And he also had his
Speaker 1: pride hurt quite a bit because he had attempted to
Speaker 1: do the same thing before World War Two but could
Speaker 1: never get it to work. But these other two guys,
Speaker 1: they got it to work. So I am a feeling
Speaker 1: that he felt a little upset that he did not
Speaker 1: come up with the solution to this problem, rather these
Speaker 1: other two guys did. He didn't let that completely derail him. However,
Speaker 1: while he was in a hotel room in Chicago, where
Speaker 1: he was attending the American Physical Society convention, he came
Speaker 1: up with an alternative to the point contact transistor called
Speaker 1: the sandwich transistor, which was easier to manufacture than the
Speaker 1: point contact type, so it ended up immediately being a
Speaker 1: replacement for this initial design of transistors. It did the
Speaker 1: same thing in a different form factor. So while he
Speaker 1: was a little might have been a little bitter about
Speaker 1: not being in on the team when they made this breakthrough,
Speaker 1: he then immediately almost made an improvement to the designed
Speaker 1: to make it more practical. A T and T made
Speaker 1: a decision. It was kind of a political decision on
Speaker 1: the back end, because you had Britain and Bardine, who
Speaker 1: were the two guys who actually invented the transistor. But
Speaker 1: then you had Shockley, who was the administrative lead of
Speaker 1: the team and who had at least had some input,
Speaker 1: although not directly responsible for the invention, and A T.
Speaker 1: Wanted to make sure they didn't step on any toes,
Speaker 1: so they made a decision where they said that any
Speaker 1: photo of the transistor that was to include the development
Speaker 1: team would also have to have Shockley in it, sort
Speaker 1: of as an uh a way of saying his contributions
Speaker 1: were important or instrumental for the development of the transistor. Now,
Speaker 1: this also tended to rub other people the wrong way,
Speaker 1: people who said he didn't have nearly enough involvement to
Speaker 1: justify being in every single photo of this transistor. So
Speaker 1: it created a little bit of drama. And also Shockley
Speaker 1: was reportedly difficult to work with at times. He had
Speaker 1: a very um, forceful and somewhat brusque personality that people
Speaker 1: didn't always enjoy being around. I'm dancing around it a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's largely because I never met Shockley, so I
Speaker 1: can't tell any firsthand information. I'm merely reporting what other
Speaker 1: people have said and even third and fourth hand accounts
Speaker 1: of that sort of stuff. So I like to be
Speaker 1: careful and not put too many words and too many
Speaker 1: people's mouths if I can. Shockley, to his credit, always
Speaker 1: tried to make sure that any stories that were about
Speaker 1: this transistor indicated that Britaine and Bardine had been the
Speaker 1: ones to make the breakthrough so he wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: steal credit, he wasn't claiming it for his own. He
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that the people responsible were credited
Speaker 1: with their work. But often Shockley would be cited as
Speaker 1: the primary or sometimes sole inventor of the transistor. That
Speaker 1: the narrative sort of became. He had been working on it,
Speaker 1: he was derailed by World War two, came back and
Speaker 1: now it's a thing, and he would point out that's
Speaker 1: an oversimplification of what had happened in many different respects.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen fifty six he was awarded the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize in Physics for his work on the transistor, along
Speaker 1: with Britain and Bardin. But the fact that he also
Speaker 1: got a Nobel Prize for this when he wasn't directly
Speaker 1: involved with the invention of the first working transistor again
Speaker 1: upset some people. Uh Shockley would end up completely alienating
Speaker 1: himself from Britain and Bardein. Neither of them wanted to
Speaker 1: work with him anymore. They felt felt that it was
Speaker 1: a difficult working relationship. Um Bartein would and Britain would
Speaker 1: actually both refuse to work with Shockley, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three Shockley himself left Bell Labs, and first he
Speaker 1: went back to cal Tech and he worked there for
Speaker 1: a while, but he was looking for something more permanent,
Speaker 1: and then he encountered a financier named Arnold Beckman, and
Speaker 1: with Beckman's help and some funding, Shockley founded a new
Speaker 1: company in California called the Shockley Semiconductor Company. They picked
Speaker 1: a location near Stanford in northern California. Shockley thought that
Speaker 1: that was an attractive spot, that the the the weather,
Speaker 1: the climate there was really nice. The location was beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was close to Stanford, so it would make it
Speaker 1: easy to recruit students who are already at Stanford directly
Speaker 1: out of school to come work at at Shockley Semiconductor.
Speaker 1: So he thought of this as a y strategy. And
Speaker 1: in fact, Shockley had a reputation for being able to
Speaker 1: recognize brilliant scientists and engineers. Maybe he couldn't manage them
Speaker 1: because of his personality, but he certainly could wrecking eys them,
Speaker 1: and so he was really good at recruiting people who
Speaker 1: would be very very strong performers in the semiconductor industry.
Speaker 1: By the way, Shockley Semiconductor would become the second company
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley, the This is the early early days
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley, before you had countless companies there. And
Speaker 1: Shockley Semiconductor was the second such company in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: The first one was Hewitt Packard, which was found in
Speaker 1: a Palo Alto garage back in nineteen thirty nine and
Speaker 1: really set the standard for for founding a company in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. There were so many companies that were founded
Speaker 1: in garages from that point forward, some of them in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, some of them in other places. So Apple Computers,
Speaker 1: for example, founded in a garage in Palo Alto, California.
Speaker 1: Microsoft also founded in a garage, but that time we're
Speaker 1: talking more about Washington, not about California. Still same kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Ing, uh, well, you got YOUWITTT. Packard that
Speaker 1: paved the way back in ninety nine. And then Shockley
Speaker 1: Semiconductor becoming the second company in Silicon Valley. This was
Speaker 1: before it had even developed that name. And Shockley, always
Speaker 1: good at recognizing strong talent, hired on some brilliant people
Speaker 1: to join his team. And two of those people, we're
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore and Robert Noisce who would eventually go on
Speaker 1: to found Intel. But we're not there yet as long
Speaker 1: as I've talked about Shockley Semiconductor, we haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where Noise and More go off to find Intel.
Speaker 1: We actually have some more drama first with Shockley, and
Speaker 1: then we have another company to talk about before we
Speaker 1: even get to Intel. But first let's give some background
Speaker 1: on both More and Noise. Gordon Moore grew up in
Speaker 1: California and was really interested in science as a kid.
Speaker 1: He earned his PhD and Chemistry and physics from cal Tech,
Speaker 1: and he joined the Applied Physics labor tory at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland. While he was there, his
Speaker 1: chief responsibility was working on solid rocket propellants for the U. S. Navy,
Speaker 1: but he felt that his talents would be better suited
Speaker 1: for the private sector and that that would be more
Speaker 1: challenging and profitable, so he decided to relocate, moved back
Speaker 1: to California, and he joined Shockley Semiconductor. Robert Noyce grew
Speaker 1: up in Iowa and was interested in physics and inventing
Speaker 1: at an early age. He earned degrees in physics at
Speaker 1: Grinnell College and at PhD in solid state physics from
Speaker 1: m I T. He went to work for the phil
Speaker 1: Co Corporation before meeting William Shockley, who recruited him to
Speaker 1: join Chockley Semiconductor. But William Shockley's management style was rough.
Speaker 1: People did not like working for him or with him,
Speaker 1: and several members of his engineering team started to re
Speaker 1: vent William Shockley, and in nineteen fifty seven, just a
Speaker 1: year after most of them had joined the company less
Speaker 1: than a year in some cases, a group of eight engineers,
Speaker 1: including More and Noise, tried to remove Shockley as the
Speaker 1: head of Shockley Semiconductor. This attempt failed. They were not
Speaker 1: able to do that, so instead all eight of them
Speaker 1: quit the company to go and found their own company.
Speaker 1: Shockley was absolutely livid about this. He was incredibly angry,
Speaker 1: and he would thenceforth refer to those eight gentlemen as
Speaker 1: the traitorous eight, because they had betrayed him by leaving
Speaker 1: his company after he had given them all the opportunities. Now,
Speaker 1: William Shockley's legacy is at best complicated. He made notable
Speaker 1: contributions in science and engineering, and without those contra abutitions,
Speaker 1: we would not have the technology we have today. We
Speaker 1: would probably be a few years behind where we are
Speaker 1: right now. But he was also a complicated guy who
Speaker 1: had awful awful ideas and philosophy and ideology. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, Shockley began to espouse his theory
Speaker 1: of dysgenics, which included the racist notion that people of
Speaker 1: African descent were naturally the intellectual inferiors of people of
Speaker 1: European stock. So he garnered a lot of criticism for
Speaker 1: these views, which he was not shy and sharing. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it has in many ways diminished people's opinions of
Speaker 1: shocklely and affected how we even talk about his contributions
Speaker 1: to engineering and science, which were considerable, but his insistence
Speaker 1: that dysgenics was a valid worldview was undeniably terrible. So
Speaker 1: that when I said great and terrible things, this would
Speaker 1: definitely fall into that terrible category. And it also illustrates
Speaker 1: how a lot of people found William Shockley difficult to
Speaker 1: be around. The Traders eight, however, had their own goal,
Speaker 1: which was creating their own company. Now was that company Intel?
Speaker 1: Well you'll find out after we take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Okay, so no, the new company
Speaker 1: was not Intel, not yet. The new company that these
Speaker 1: eight men founded was called Fair Child Semiconductor. Now this
Speaker 1: was an extension of an already existing company. That company
Speaker 1: was fair Child Camera and Instrument Corporation. So this company
Speaker 1: that produced camera as another instrument wanted to get into
Speaker 1: the burgeoning semiconductor and transistor business, but they didn't really
Speaker 1: have the wherewithal to do it within the company itself.
Speaker 1: So these eight people come up to the company and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we just left Shockley Semiconductor. We're free to work with you.
Speaker 1: We'd be willing to set up the fair Child Semiconductor company.
Speaker 1: You give us the the capital to start the company,
Speaker 1: will start producing products for fair Child. So it was
Speaker 1: a great a great relationship. Fair Child got an enormous
Speaker 1: jump ahead of the competition because these were some of
Speaker 1: the leading thinkers and transistors and semiconductors of the time.
Speaker 1: So it allowed Fairchild to get a really big head
Speaker 1: start over other competitors. Now this podcast is not the
Speaker 1: fair Child Semiconductor story. I've actually talked about fair Child
Speaker 1: semi Conductor in a previous episode. But Noise and More,
Speaker 1: who I promise are going to co found Intel before
Speaker 1: this episode is over. They were at fair Child Semiconductor
Speaker 1: for eleven years, so it behooves us to learn a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what they accomplished while they were there. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the most important contributions Noise made at fair
Speaker 1: Child was the development of the integrated circuit. These days,
Speaker 1: integrated circuits are common, so it could be a little
Speaker 1: challenging to understand how important this was, how big a
Speaker 1: deal it was at the time. But let's just use
Speaker 1: our imaginations for a little moment now. Before Noise and
Speaker 1: also a Texas Instruments engineer named Jack Kilby who was
Speaker 1: independently working on the same challenge, circuits were made of independent,
Speaker 1: discrete components that were attached to each other with wires.
Speaker 1: So every element of a circuit was its own little,
Speaker 1: separate do hicky that was connected by wires to other
Speaker 1: do hicky's. In this circuit, the doo hikis dependent upon
Speaker 1: whatever you wanted the circuit to do, whether they were
Speaker 1: resistors or they were some form of electrical load like
Speaker 1: a light or something else, switches, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So these were macro circuits right there. Large There are
Speaker 1: things that you could work with with your hands if
Speaker 1: you needed to, and if you were to look at
Speaker 1: early circuitry, each individual component would be its own thing.
Speaker 1: Integrated circuits, as the name suggests, is a circuit in
Speaker 1: which all the components are integrated together on a single
Speaker 1: wafer of semiconductor material. Now, both Noise Over at Fairchild
Speaker 1: and kill be Over at Texas Instruments developed this idea independently,
Speaker 1: and both of them got credit for it. The Noise
Speaker 1: came up with a means of creating the connections between
Speaker 1: components on a circuit using a process called the planar process.
Speaker 1: This involves evaporating lines of conductive material directly onto the
Speaker 1: semi conductor wafer. So this is sort of like designing
Speaker 1: the wires the connect of different pieces together, but you
Speaker 1: do it by evaporating this metallic material so that it
Speaker 1: forms on the subway the semiconductor wafer in a very
Speaker 1: specific pattern that allows the connections between the different components.
Speaker 1: And it was a revolutionary technique at the time. As
Speaker 1: for Gordon Moore, his most famous contribution during his time
Speaker 1: at Fairchild is what we now call Moore's law. Now
Speaker 1: that's not to say it was his most important contribution,
Speaker 1: but it's the one that most folks are aware of. Now.
Speaker 1: This comes from an observation he made in a paper
Speaker 1: that he titled Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits, which
Speaker 1: was published in the journal Electronics in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: And it's probably not what you think it is. Moore's
Speaker 1: law tends to be slightly misconstrued from the way that
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore presented it in this paper. The common interpretation
Speaker 1: today is that Moore's law means that every eighteen to
Speaker 1: twenty four months computers double in processing power. So a
Speaker 1: computer from two years ago would be half as powerful
Speaker 1: as the computer you can buy today, and a computer
Speaker 1: two years from now will be twice as powerful as
Speaker 1: the computers you buy today. Computer from four years ago
Speaker 1: would be half as powerful as one from two years ago, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so More was making an observation about the linear
Speaker 1: relationship between time and the in this interpretation, processing power
Speaker 1: of computers. But that's not entirely what More was actually
Speaker 1: talking about back in nineteen six. Instead, More was observing
Speaker 1: that as companies developed more advanced methods of designing, producing,
Speaker 1: and mass manufacturing discrete components, namely transistors, onto integrated circuits,
Speaker 1: it followed this linear pathway. So a company would make
Speaker 1: a breakthrough. It would invest in the manufacturing process to
Speaker 1: develop a transistor, or rather smaller transistor, so that you
Speaker 1: could fit more of those transistors on a single semiconductor chip,
Speaker 1: and then they would make money by selling this more
Speaker 1: advanced semiconductor chip with more transistors on it, which would
Speaker 1: give them more money to put back into research and
Speaker 1: development and to make even smaller transistors to make more
Speaker 1: powerful semiconductor chips and then sell those in future circuits. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, More was pointing out that this trend
Speaker 1: was supported by the economics of the semiconductor and integrated
Speaker 1: circuit industries. This wasn't so much a commentary on technological progress,
Speaker 1: but more how the market supported the ability for engineers
Speaker 1: to research and develop and design and produce these more
Speaker 1: powerful circuits. It's a delicate and role difference from the
Speaker 1: way More's law tends to be communicated, but I think
Speaker 1: it's an important distinction. There's profit to be made an innovation.
Speaker 1: So Moreover, this classical approach of cramming more components onto
Speaker 1: an integrated circuit would eventually become inaccurate as well. So
Speaker 1: originally it was Gordon Moore saying here in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: we can fit twice as many transistors on a chip
Speaker 1: as we could back in nineteen sixty three. And the
Speaker 1: reason for that is that we have developed enough technology
Speaker 1: due to the economic viability of these chips, to have
Speaker 1: the size of the transistors and thus double the number
Speaker 1: that can be on a sub semiconductor chip. Same thing
Speaker 1: would hold true that this observation, as long as it
Speaker 1: maintains that linear pathway, means that in two years will
Speaker 1: fit twice as many transistors as to day. Two years more,
Speaker 1: it will be twice as many as that, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That's not exactly the truth. Now we don't really see
Speaker 1: the number of discrete components doubling every eighteen to twenty
Speaker 1: four months. Uh. Today we're really talking about components that
Speaker 1: are on the nanoscale. So a nanometer is one billionth
Speaker 1: of a meter. That is a scale that is so
Speaker 1: small you cannot view it with an optical microscope. You
Speaker 1: would need a scanning electron microscope or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: Optical microscopes aren't going to allow you to see things
Speaker 1: on the nano scale. That's how tiny these components are
Speaker 1: in microprocessors today. At that scale, quantum effects come into
Speaker 1: play these weird quantum mechanics effects that mean your structures
Speaker 1: may not behave the way you intended because of things
Speaker 1: like electron tunneling. Electron tunneling is a fancy way of
Speaker 1: saying a electrons be crazy yo. Essentially, electrons have an
Speaker 1: area of potential where they could be at any given
Speaker 1: moment around their respective atoms, or if they're free floating electrons,
Speaker 1: it just means there's a zone within which the electron
Speaker 1: might be at any point. Like it, maybe if you
Speaker 1: were to draw a circle, you could imagine that the
Speaker 1: electron could be anywhere within that circle at any given moment.
Speaker 1: Transistors involve electron gates that are supposed to control the
Speaker 1: flow of electrons. Either they allow them to pass through
Speaker 1: or do not allow them to pass through. If the
Speaker 1: electron gates gets so thin that this zone where an
Speaker 1: electron can appear can sometimes be on the other side
Speaker 1: of a closed gate, it means that sometimes the electron
Speaker 1: is on the other side of the closed gate, even
Speaker 1: though it didn't have to go through the gate itself.
Speaker 1: It's as if the electron has tunneled through the gate.
Speaker 1: This is a non trivial problem when you're talking about
Speaker 1: transistors that have to govern the movement of electrons. Now
Speaker 1: engineers have figured out ways around this using different materials
Speaker 1: and different architectures. But it does mean that we're rapidly
Speaker 1: approaching a point where we can't just make stuff smaller.
Speaker 1: We're getting to a fundamental limit of how small these
Speaker 1: components can be while still running on the basics of
Speaker 1: computer logic and electricity the way we have been running
Speaker 1: them in the past. Uh. However, it does mean that
Speaker 1: we don't really talk about cramming more components onto a chip. Necessarily,
Speaker 1: we talk about what it's output is. Can it put
Speaker 1: out twice as much processing power as the ones that
Speaker 1: came eighteen months or twenty four months ago. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how we frame More's law these days. By the way,
Speaker 1: you might wonder, if Moore's law is true and computers
Speaker 1: are getting twice as fast every couple of years, why
Speaker 1: is it that my computer has never seemed to get
Speaker 1: twice as fast. Well, the problem with that is that
Speaker 1: you have software bloat that often goes along with these
Speaker 1: improvements in hardware. So if your software is demanding more
Speaker 1: and more resources from a computer as it gets more advanced,
Speaker 1: as you know, new types of software come out, then
Speaker 1: all you're really doing is just trying to stay ahead
Speaker 1: of the software bloat with more powerful hardware, the software
Speaker 1: just takes more advantage of the hardware that's there, because
Speaker 1: the software two years from now is gonna require more
Speaker 1: assets than the software from today. So it's just constantly
Speaker 1: treading water. You never really get to a point where
Speaker 1: the computer really feels twice as fast as your old computer, uh,
Speaker 1: unless you're just running legacy software, in which case you
Speaker 1: might say, wow, this is wicked fast, all right. Noise
Speaker 1: and More both did very well at fair Child. Robert
Speaker 1: Noyce became the general manager of fair Child Semiconductor. Gordon
Speaker 1: Moore was the head of research and development. But while
Speaker 1: they and the six others whom Shockley named traders were
Speaker 1: the ones to found the company, they didn't really control
Speaker 1: the company. It still fell under the umbrella of the
Speaker 1: parent company, fair Child Camera and Instrument, which meant that
Speaker 1: Noise and More and all the others still had to
Speaker 1: answer to other people, people who didn't all have the
Speaker 1: same priorities that they did. So one big sticking point
Speaker 1: was that fair Child Camera and Instrument was taking some
Speaker 1: of the profits from fair Child Semiconductor and using them
Speaker 1: in areas outside the semiconductor industry. They were investing them
Speaker 1: in other parts of the company. So to Noise and More,
Speaker 1: it felt like fair Child Camera and Instrument was siphoning
Speaker 1: away some of the profits they were generating in order
Speaker 1: to support other parts of their business, and they didn't
Speaker 1: like that. So they felt the money should have remained
Speaker 1: with the semiconductor industry, maybe invested back into the company
Speaker 1: or into the employees. And they became increasingly disenchanted with
Speaker 1: the way things were running. So in July nine, Noise
Speaker 1: and More both tendered their resignation from fair Child semi Conductor.
Speaker 1: So they had already left Shockley semi Conductor to found
Speaker 1: fair Child semi Conductor. Now they were going to leave
Speaker 1: fair Child semi Conductor to found a third company. They
Speaker 1: each put forth a quarter of a million dollars as
Speaker 1: an initial investment in this new company, so together they
Speaker 1: had a half million, and they raised another two and
Speaker 1: a half million from various investors who were primarily organized
Speaker 1: by a businessman named Arthur Rock. And by the way,
Speaker 1: here's another fun trivia note. Arthur Rock, the businessman who
Speaker 1: arranged to get that two and a half million. He's
Speaker 1: the guy who came up with the term venture capitalist.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever heard venture capitalist, that was a
Speaker 1: term coined by Arthur Rock, the guy who helped fund Intel. Now,
Speaker 1: according to the founders, they presented Arthur Rock with a
Speaker 1: business proposal that was a grand total of one pages
Speaker 1: long and only was one page, very simple business proposal
Speaker 1: that essentially said they wanted to form a company that
Speaker 1: would build integrated circuits. So Rock got on board. He
Speaker 1: managed to secure the funding from various investors. He put
Speaker 1: in ten thousand of his own dollars into the investment pool,
Speaker 1: and he would eventually become the first chairman of the
Speaker 1: new company. But why are they going to call it?
Speaker 1: So first they started thinking about potential names. They said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we can name it after ourselves, But then they
Speaker 1: realized that they called it the More Noise Company, it
Speaker 1: would sound like more Noise and somehow being the head
Speaker 1: of the More Noise Company didn't seem terribly attractive. They
Speaker 1: then went with the company name in M Electronics, the
Speaker 1: initials of their last names of Noise and More. But
Speaker 1: this didn't last very long either, and within a month
Speaker 1: or so they were changing their minds. They decided to
Speaker 1: go with a totally different name, and they renamed their
Speaker 1: new company Intel, which was inspired by the phrase integrated Electronics.
Speaker 1: So they took INT from integrated and l from Electronics
Speaker 1: get Intel. They couldn't just adopt the name right away, however,
Speaker 1: because there was another business called Intel Co. That had
Speaker 1: the rights to it. So first Noise and More purchased
Speaker 1: the rights to the name, and then they used Intel
Speaker 1: and Intel was officially born. They located the company in
Speaker 1: Santa Clara, California, and shortly after establishing Intel, they recruited
Speaker 1: a guy named Andrew Grove from Fairchild Semiconductor. The three
Speaker 1: of them would each serve as the chairman and chief
Speaker 1: executive officer of Intel at some point over the next
Speaker 1: three decades. A bit later, in nineteen sixty nine, they
Speaker 1: released the company logo. The original logo had Intel and
Speaker 1: all lower case letters. You can still see that today,
Speaker 1: But the original logo had the E and Intel at
Speaker 1: a lower level than the rest of the letters, so
Speaker 1: it was dropped down. The dropped down E logo is
Speaker 1: what they called it now. At first, Intel's concentration was
Speaker 1: the design and production of memory chips, which included a
Speaker 1: bipolar memory chip called the three one oh one schlot Key.
Speaker 1: Bipolar in this case doesn't have to do with any
Speaker 1: sort of personality issue, it's just to talk about the
Speaker 1: specific type of memory. This helped the company gets some
Speaker 1: attention while it developed more innovative products, and then the
Speaker 1: company made waves by launching the first metal oxide semiconductor
Speaker 1: for static random access memory, also known as the eleven
Speaker 1: oh one. Now, there are lots of different types of
Speaker 1: computer memory. There's rob memory, or read only memory RAM,
Speaker 1: or random access memory, CAN memory, and tons more. As
Speaker 1: the name suggests, the purpose of memory is to store
Speaker 1: some sort of information so that the computer might refer
Speaker 1: to it for any given application. Storing information and computer
Speaker 1: memory simplifies things, speeds it up considerably because the computer
Speaker 1: doesn't have to reference some other form of storage each
Speaker 1: time it needs to reference a particular piece of information. Instead,
Speaker 1: it stores that information and computer memory so it can
Speaker 1: reference it very quickly. And I've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: computer memory on this show, and I'm sure most of
Speaker 1: you now have at least some understanding of it. But
Speaker 1: I always like to take these opportunities to at least
Speaker 1: take a kind of big picture view of the technology.
Speaker 1: So think of RAM computer memory like a big spreadsheet table,
Speaker 1: because essentially that's what it is. The columns of the
Speaker 1: spreadsheet we would call bitlines, and the rows in the
Speaker 1: spreadsheet are called word lines. The intersection of bit lines
Speaker 1: and word lines is the address of a memory cell,
Speaker 1: and computers can access information stored in RAM using this
Speaker 1: general address. Right they know the address of the memory cell,
Speaker 1: they can pull the information out of that cell right away.
Speaker 1: This is really useful and it's pretty fast. This differentiates
Speaker 1: RAM from sequential memory. Sequential memory, as it sounds, is
Speaker 1: stored in sequence. This would be like a tape, videotape
Speaker 1: or a cassette tape where you have to actually go
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the piece of data and move down,
Speaker 1: go all the way through the data to find the
Speaker 1: section that you need in order to retrieve it. It's
Speaker 1: much more time consuming. If you want an analogy, imagine
Speaker 1: that you have an enormous book with tons of information
Speaker 1: written down in it, but it has no table contents,
Speaker 1: There are no page numbers, there are no chapter headings,
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to find something specific in the book,
Speaker 1: you would have to essentially start at the beginning and
Speaker 1: start skimming through line by line to try and find
Speaker 1: the information you wanted. But if you had a similar
Speaker 1: book that was organized in chapters with page numbers, section numbers,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and it has an amazing index,
Speaker 1: you would be able to find what you were looking
Speaker 1: for pretty quickly. That's what RAM does with computers. And
Speaker 1: I might do a full episode to talk about the
Speaker 1: actual science and technology behind memory, but that would take
Speaker 1: up so much time. Now. For now, we're just gonna
Speaker 1: skip over it and just say Intel's first products were
Speaker 1: memory chips. But were they successful or find out about that.
Speaker 1: We'll have to come back after a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Kind of successful. The eleven O one
Speaker 1: met with limited success, and that was largely because the approach,
Speaker 1: while it was innovative, was a little limited. In that
Speaker 1: first memory chip. In Intel launched the eleven O three,
Speaker 1: which was a dynamic RAM chip or d RAM chip,
Speaker 1: with one kill a byte of memory, though some records
Speaker 1: say it was one kill a bit, which is actually
Speaker 1: a pretty big difference. Remember a bite is eight bits
Speaker 1: of information, and a bit is your basic unit of information.
Speaker 1: It's either a zero or a one. This was a
Speaker 1: much more useful chip than the somewhat limited eleven oh one,
Speaker 1: and it became a successful product for the company. One
Speaker 1: of their first big customers for the eleven oh three
Speaker 1: was Honeywell Incorporated. Honeywell is another huge name in computers.
Speaker 1: I'll need to do a full episode about Honeywell in
Speaker 1: the future. The company shows Intel's chips to replace the
Speaker 1: core memory technology in Honeywell computer. So this was an
Speaker 1: enormous win for Intel. That same year, Intel purchased twenty
Speaker 1: six acres of land on the corner of Coffin Road
Speaker 1: and Central Expressway in Santa Clara. It had been a
Speaker 1: peach orchard. So just think if they had gone with
Speaker 1: that land and first, if Intel had bought that land
Speaker 1: as its first action, maybe they would have not named
Speaker 1: themselves Intel. Maybe they would have given themselves some sort
Speaker 1: of peach name because they bought a peach orchard. Maybe
Speaker 1: we would have ended up with peach chips and apple
Speaker 1: products further down the line, which would make a delicious
Speaker 1: cobbler Cobbler. The company's innovations in memory would eventually become
Speaker 1: the industry standard, which, as you can imagine, was great
Speaker 1: news for Intel. But the innovation didn't stop there. Now
Speaker 1: we're going to end this episode in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: which was just a couple of years after the company
Speaker 1: was founded. But that's because there were some really big
Speaker 1: things that happened in nineteen seventy one. First, Intel introduced
Speaker 1: a new technology that year called eraseable programmable read only
Speaker 1: memory or e PROM or sometimes just i RAM memory.
Speaker 1: This chip had an incredibly useful feature. It could retain
Speaker 1: information in computer memory even after you switched off the
Speaker 1: computer's power. So typically a power cycle will wipe out
Speaker 1: computer memory because once you remove power, nothing is going
Speaker 1: to the memory. It cannot maintain its state and it
Speaker 1: returns to a base state, So anything that was stored
Speaker 1: in memory is essentially wiped out. The information that you
Speaker 1: have stored on the hard drive or whatever other media
Speaker 1: you're using is still there, but the stuff that was
Speaker 1: in this volatile computer memory is gone. E PROM was
Speaker 1: a type of non volatile computer memory, meaning that when
Speaker 1: you had power cut off, it would maintain the state
Speaker 1: that it was in before power was removed, thus it
Speaker 1: would remain within computer memory. This particular Intel product was
Speaker 1: called the seventeen O two Because Intel had a habit
Speaker 1: of numbering products, which made it a little less sexy
Speaker 1: than other company products, but at least you can figure
Speaker 1: out what each thing did based upon the numbering system
Speaker 1: that Intel used. Also, in nineteen seventy one, the company
Speaker 1: would make another big step. They would go public. They
Speaker 1: would hold an initial public offering. So from its founding
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight through to nineteen seventy one, it
Speaker 1: was a private company. It was supporting itself mainly through
Speaker 1: sales and through more rounds of venture capital. But eventually
Speaker 1: they were making enough of a success to go public.
Speaker 1: It was only three years in so they held an
Speaker 1: I p O and stocks were priced at twenty three
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents per share, and the company raised
Speaker 1: six and six point eight million dollars. Now, compared to
Speaker 1: some modern day electronics companies and tech companies, six point
Speaker 1: eight million dollars seems laughable, right you think of Intel,
Speaker 1: It's this enormous company and it got start with an
Speaker 1: I p O that only raised six point eight million.
Speaker 1: When you see i p o s today for other
Speaker 1: companies in the dozens and dozens or hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars for evaluation, it's crazy to think about it.
Speaker 1: But then also remember this was nine So for one thing,
Speaker 1: we got to adjust for inflation, Well we don't. I
Speaker 1: already did it. The adjustment for inflation would be around
Speaker 1: forty one million dollars in today's money, so still modest
Speaker 1: compared to some tech companies today, but it was an
Speaker 1: enormous sum back then. Keep in mind this is before
Speaker 1: the personal computer industry. Computers at this point are still
Speaker 1: monstrously large things that research institutions and some big companies have,
Speaker 1: and that's it. So it was still a pretty enormous story.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't turn down forty one million dollars, by the way,
Speaker 1: So if anyone wants to make a investment of forty
Speaker 1: one million dollars in Jonathan Strickland, I'm more than willing
Speaker 1: to enter negotiations. So just throwing that out there. Intel
Speaker 1: employees also in nineteen seventy one got to move into
Speaker 1: their new headquarters building, which had been constructed on that
Speaker 1: land they had purchased earlier. They owned this building until
Speaker 1: owned the land. They owned the building itself. They were
Speaker 1: no longer renting out space from other companies. So nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one had a move in day, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. And also in nineteen seventy one, that was
Speaker 1: when Intel got into the business most people know them for,
Speaker 1: which would be micro processors. Now, that project would actually
Speaker 1: date all the way back to the founding of Intel
Speaker 1: or shortly thereafter. They started the project in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen seventy one that they had something
Speaker 1: to show for it. But in nineteen sixty nine, another
Speaker 1: company called the Nipon Calculating Machine Corporation came to Intel
Speaker 1: and said, we want you to design twelve custom chips
Speaker 1: for our printing calculator, which would be the boozy Com
Speaker 1: one for one PF or Busy Calm, probably because it's
Speaker 1: spelled like business, but it's busy Calm, not boozy com.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure after using a printing calculator that was
Speaker 1: one of the earliest ones ever made, you'd probably wanted
Speaker 1: to be a boozy Com I'm guessing anyway, until engineers
Speaker 1: took a look at this proposal and they countered, they said,
Speaker 1: we could actually make what you want, but with four
Speaker 1: custom chips instead of twelve. One of those custom chips
Speaker 1: would be memory. One of them would be read only memory.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing, but one of them would be
Speaker 1: a programmable chip that could be used for all sorts
Speaker 1: of different stuff, and Nipon agreed to this. Well, this
Speaker 1: was an innovative idea to have this programmable chip as
Speaker 1: opposed to something that was made from the beginning for
Speaker 1: a very specific application. To have a programmable chip would
Speaker 1: open up incredible opportunities further down the line, probably beyond
Speaker 1: what Intel had anticipated. So through this project, Intel was
Speaker 1: able to create the four zero zero four chip. This
Speaker 1: was a central processing unit or CPU. Intel purchased the
Speaker 1: rights from Nipon to market this chip separately from those
Speaker 1: calculating machines, because if they hadn't, then Nipon would have
Speaker 1: had the exclusivity to that technology for their calculating machines,
Speaker 1: and then Intel would have missed out on a tremendous opportunity.
Speaker 1: So they purchased the rights and the four zero zero
Speaker 1: four processor was born. Electronic News heralded this event with
Speaker 1: a headline that read, announcing a new era in integrated electronics,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what it was. The ability to create
Speaker 1: a programmable central processing unit was a non trivial contribution
Speaker 1: to the advancement of electronics. And computer science,