WEBVTT - The Intel Story Part One 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:12.119 Technology with tech Stuff from how stuff Works dot Com. 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:15.120 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host, 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:19.160 Jonathan Strickland. I am a senior writer with how stuff 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:22.480 Works dot Com. I say that every show, and yet 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:24.680 some people are still surprised to know there is a 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.920 how stuff Works dot Com. There is and explains how 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.920 stuff works, not just technology, but all sorts of things. 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:33.279 So if you've ever been curious how something works, check 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:37.640 out our website. Chances are we've got some information about it. Today, 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:41.120 we're going to do another one of my wonderful episodes 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:45.360 about the history of a big company in technology. And 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.040 I use the word wonderful somewhat tongue in cheek because 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.120 it's weird to toot one's own horn. But I genuinely 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:55.800 enjoy researching these episodes because I always learned something that 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.880 I didn't know before about companies that I'm really from. 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.279 You're with from a product standpoint, but maybe not so 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:09.800 much behind the scenes. That's certainly the case with today's topic. Intel. Now, 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:15.000 Intel is a major player in the computers industry, obviously 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:19.720 in the semiconductor and microprocessor industries. Big big deal. But 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:23.080 I wanted to take this opportunity to kind of talk 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.400 about the history of the company, how it developed over time, 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:29.320 and sort of the contributions it has made to the 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:35.880 industry of electronics and computers. Right, So, chances are, at 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:38.520 some point or another in your life you've used a 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.240 device that had a little sticker on it that said 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:45.520 that there was Intel inside. The company is famous for 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.440 producing the chips that make our computers and electronics so powerful. 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.000 So they're famous for making the stuff that makes our 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:57.600 other stuff work. But what is the actual story behind 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:00.480 the company. Well, understand that we're gonna have to do 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.760 something that I'm infamous for doing, which is that we're 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.760 gonna have to go roll the clock back well before 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:11.160 there ever was an Intel, Because I really do think 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.799 that to have a true understanding of any subject, not 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.799 just a company, but really anything, you need to go 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.960 back quite a bit and get the foundation set before 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.280 you start just spouting off facts. I could tell you 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.160 that Intel was founded in the late nineteen sixties and 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:33.080 pick up from there, but without understanding the pathway that 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.480 lad there, you don't have as full and appreciation, At 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.880 least in my opinion, that's the case, certainly personally for me, 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.560 that's the case. So we're gonna look at a couple 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.200 of companies that preceded Intel to understand why there's an 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.680 Intel in the first place, and we'll talk about the 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:55.760 Traitorous Eight. There's treachery involved in this story, and we'll 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.480 also talk about Moore's Law that's going to play a 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:01.639 big part in this DISCUSSI and as well, because all 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.639 of this is wrapped up in the birth of Intel, 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.600 and it's a story of not just technology, but of people. 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.760 And as we all know, people are complicated critters. We're 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:16.760 capable of great and terrible things, and sometimes things that 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.960 are both great and terrible at the same time. So 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:24.040 today we're gonna look at some stories about people who 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:29.279 made amazing contributions to us in the form of engineering, 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:34.560 advancing science, understanding the physics of electronics at a deeper 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.560 level that allowed us to create incredible gadgets. But we'll 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.120 also learn some not so nice stuff, some things about 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:47.600 people that were at least disturbing, if not worse. But 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:52.640 much of our story is going to revolve around semiconductors. 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:56.360 So as a refresher, a semiconductor is a class of 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.840 material that has a much lower resistance to the flow 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:03.960 of electrical current in one direction than it does in 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.280 the other direction. If you listen to my episodes about 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:12.240 the history of electricity, you remember about the concept of resistance, right, 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:16.160 that's the tendency of any given material to resist the 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.359 flow of electrons. So, if you have something that's a 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:22.839 really good conductor, it tends to have a very low resistance. 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:27.440 It allows electrons to move through fairly free freely. But 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.320 something with a very high resistance, like a very very 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.800 high resistance that's an insulator, it doesn't allow electrons to 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.320 pass through nearly as easily. If you're able to take 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.960 a conductor and you're able to lower the temperature near 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.640 to absolute zero, it ends up becoming a superconductor, meaning 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.520 that there's no resistance at all, and it allows electrons 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:53.760 to pass through without any resistance. So resistance is this 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.360 tendency to again resist the flow of electrons. It turns 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:03.000 out that in some materials this is a variable where 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:07.839 under one set of circumstances, electrons will flow through very easily, 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.960 and under a different set of circumstances using that same material, 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.160 electrons will not flow through nearly as easily. These are 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:21.800 what we call semiconductors because sometimes they conduct and sometimes 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.919 they do not. It can be useful to think of 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.719 this as sort of like an inclined plane or a slide. 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:32.159 If you have a marble and you let it roll 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:36.000 down a slide, it does so easily with very little effort, right. 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:37.640 You just have to move it so it hits that 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:39.839 inclined plane and gravity does the rest of the work. 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:42.800 To move the marble back up the slide, you have 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.640 to put forth some effort. You have to push the 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.920 marble up the slide, working against gravity to do so. 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.600 Semiconductors are kind of similar, except we're talking about electrons, 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:57.560 not not large macro objects like marbles. And it's not 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.240 a perfect analogy, but it allows you to kind of 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:04.760 understand what's going on now. A semiconductor's tendency to allow 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.640 or prevent electricity from flowing through it can be altered 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.919 in a few different ways, depending upon the material. So, 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:15.560 for example, some semiconductor material will change its resistance if 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.560 you introduce some impurities into it. This is called doping, 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:24.920 where you strategically add in some of these impurities to 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.880 change it from being say pure silicon, to dope silicon. 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:34.040 And this would allow for the transfer of electrons in 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:37.720 one direction more easily, Or you might be able to 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.919 change the resistance of a semiconductor by applying a magnetic 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.480 field to it, or there are other ways of changing 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.839 Like I mentioned with superconductors, that's temperature. So there are 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.600 a lot of different factors that can change the way 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.919 a conductor conducts electricity, whether it's with little resistance or 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:59.680 with a great deal of resistance. The first recorded use 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.160 of the word semi conducting that I know of came 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.680 from Alessandro Volta. And again, if you listen to those 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:11.200 history of Electricity episodes, then you know that Volta was 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.960 an eighteenth century philosopher and inventor who created an early 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:19.320 battery called the voltaic pile. But as brilliant as Volta was, 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.960 he did not actually lay down any theories about what 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.440 semiconductors are or what was going on, largely because he 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:30.000 did not have a full understanding of what electricity was. Remember, 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.760 for for centuries people thought electricity was some form of fluid. 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.560 They hadn't didn't have a full understanding of what it 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:41.720 actually was. In the nineteenth century, you had Michael Faraday. 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:45.280 He was another scientist and he noticed that silver sulfides 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:50.160 electrical resistance would change at different temperatures. So he made 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:55.160 this observation. If he changed the temperature of silver sulfide, 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:59.680 the resistance would also change. Johan Hittorf, who was another 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.840 science has published a study about temperature dependence of the 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:08.720 electrical conductivity of certain materials, adding to more knowledge about 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:14.640 the nature of semiconductors. Several scientists formulated theories about semiconductors 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.680 and the factors that would cause them to change their 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.840 resistance to electrical flow, but it wouldn't be until the 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.600 mid twentieth century that someone figured out how they could 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:28.440 be used to solve what was becoming a very tricky problem. Now, 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:35.319 initially this problem was all about signal amplification. Now, signals 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.439 are very important in all sorts of different electronic applications, 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.360 and often the signal that you generate may be very 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.720 weak and you need to amplify it. You need to 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.760 increase the amplitude of the signal in order for you 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.400 to do something useful with it. Uh that it was 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:57.080 certainly the case with telephone communication. In the early twentieth century, 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.160 a little company called A T and T was struggling 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.199 with this because they were laying out a coast to 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:10.440 coast network of telephone lines. They were allowing for transcontinental 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.439 phone calls, but they needed to be able to boost 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:17.320 the signal that went along the telephone lines so that 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.600 the thing you heard on one end would be intelligible, 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.480 so that if I'm talking in Atlanta and I want 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.720 someone in San Francisco to hear me, the signal remains 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:31.119 strong throughout the entire journey from Atlanta to San Francisco. 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.400 So they needed to figure out a way to amplify signals, 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:41.480 and initially they were looking at using vacuum tubes. Now, 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.360 A T and D was really interested in innovating in 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.679 this space, largely because the company was starting to worry 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.839 about its patents, and it purchased several patents from Alexander 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:57.720 Graham Bell, who we attribute the creation of the telephone too, 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:00.959 and those patents were what allowed A. T and T 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:06.840 to maintain a strategic advantage over other potential competitors. But 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:13.400 patents expect they expire after a while, so once they expire, 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:16.880 that information isn't available for anyone to use without having 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.480 to pay a license. So the patent allows you to 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:23.400 see how how people are doing things, but it prevents 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:27.280 you from following that same example unless you license the 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.359 information from the patent holder. Well, once the patent expires, 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:34.960 it's free game. So A T and T was looking 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.000 at these patents expiring and they said, well, we really 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.520 need to innovate in other spaces to maintain our competitive advantage. 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.160 And you've heard me probably talk about A T and T. 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:46.520 I did some episodes about the company not that long ago, 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:52.080 and they were very good at maintaining their advantage for 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:54.719 a really long time, even after they got broken up 0:10:54.840 --> 0:11:00.640 by the United States government. Well, they the company was 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.760 so concerned about this they even brought Thomas Vale out 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.000 of retirement, that was their former president of the company, 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.319 and they wanted to really tackle this problem. And again, 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:13.800 initially they started to use vacuum tubes as signal amplifiers. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.720 These were devices that were invented by a guy named 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.080 Lee de Forest. And one day I will have to 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:23.880 do a full episode about vacuum tube technology and exactly 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.080 how it works, but it's a little outside the scope 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:31.079 of this episode. Now, one thing you should know is 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.240 vacuum tubes were not a perfect technology. They had a 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.040 lot of drawbacks. They were delicate, they could burn out, 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:40.880 so you'd have to replace them fairly regularly. Uh. They 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.760 were also very large and bulky, so you could not 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.199 have a small form factor for whatever device you were 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.839 using that had vacuum tube amplifiers in it, And they 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:56.080 generated a lot of heat, which in some applications is problematic. 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.400 Now there's some things where people still love to use 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:04.439 vacuum tubes as their signal amplifier. People who use amplifiers 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:11.320 for musical instruments love, generally speaking, amplifiers that use vacuum tubes. 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.400 They those are valued very highly in the musical field, 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:19.520 but for something like long distance telephone calls, it was 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:22.840 seen as sort of a band aid to the problem. 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:25.480 And so the company A T and T was really 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:29.199 interested in figuring out an alternative to these, and they 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:33.079 tasked their research and development ARM to try and come 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.280 up with something. That ARM was known as Bell Labs, 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.120 and they wanted to find an alternative to vacuum tubes, 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.560 something that could boost a signal similar to the tubes, 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:43.880 but take up a fraction of the size and put 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:49.400 out very little heat comparatively speaking. The team leader for 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.760 this project at Bell Labs was a guy named William 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:57.640 Bill Shockley. In a way, Shockley would become partly responsible 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:01.040 for the foundation of Intel, but it wasn't because he 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.240 was a founder of Intel. He wasn't. He was not 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.480 among the co founders of Intel. However, you could argue 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:11.040 that he was at least partly responsible for Intel ever existing. 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.760 Shockley was born in London, England, but both his parents 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:19.800 were American. His father was a mining engineer who had 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.319 contract work in the UK, and so I had moved 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.000 his family to the United Kingdom. His mother was one 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.680 of the first women to graduate Stanford, and she held 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:32.560 degrees in mathematics and art. Now, apparently the Shockley family 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.680 was a group of curmudgeon lely folks. They were a 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:42.600 little grouchy from all accounts. Uh. They might have had 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:47.199 arrestibility as a family feature. His parents never seemed to 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.199 be able to stay in one place for more than 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:51.520 a year, so they moved around a lot, and Shockley 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.679 himself would develop many of the same characteristics as his parents, 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:57.800 being a little difficult to be around, which is probably 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:01.960 a generous way of putting it. Now. Eventually, Shockley attended 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.520 the California Institute of Technology or cal Tech back in 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:10.080 nineteen and he majored in physics. He was apparently really 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.480 quite the prankster over at cal Tech, supposedly, as pranks 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.360 were the stuff of legend. I did not, however, look 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:20.440 into those for this episode. Maybe in the future one. 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.360 He pursued a doctorate at m I T in nineteen 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.480 thirty three, and then he became an apprentice to a 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.960 man named Philip Morse, and as a result he got 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:34.760 a job at Bell Labs. He gained a reputation as 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.600 a brilliant and innovative problem solver. Now this is a 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.440 bit of a tangent, but it's an example of his 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:46.000 sense of innovation. Uh. He was one of the people 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.640 who made an early design for a nuclear reactor. He 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:52.800 actually partnered with a guy named James Fisk to work 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.560 on this. They were trying to suss out how you 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.800 could make a sustained nuclear reaction, and Shockley's idea was 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:03.400 that you could use uranium and little chunks, and you 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.360 could separate the chunks of uranium from each other using 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.520 some other material, and the purpose of that material would 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:13.320 be to slow down but not capture neutrons as they're 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:17.000 given off by the uranium, and by doing that allowing 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:20.400 the neutrons to hit other atoms of you two thirty 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:25.080 five and thus generate more neutrons as the YOUTO thirty 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:29.360 five would decay, and these new these neutrons would then 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.960 move out to again uh impact other you too thirty 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:37.640 five atoms and sustain the reaction so that you would 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:42.120 just continuously have this release of radioactive energy. Now, their 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:45.240 work would end up being classified by the US government, 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.080 as this was during World War two and considered highly 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:53.840 dangerous material. It turned out that the scientists who were 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.320 working on the Manhattan Project we're concentrating on essentially the 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.760 same thing that Fiskin and Shockley we're thinking about, except, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.400 of course, Shockley and fisk were mostly interested in a 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.520 nuclear reactor, whereas the Manhattan Project was all about a 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.120 more uncontrolled nuclear reaction to create a bomb. But they 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.000 were all working on similar things. They didn't have any 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:16.400 knowledge of each other because the US government was very 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.920 much concerned with keeping this stuff secret and safe from 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:23.960 potential enemies, so they didn't know anything about each other's 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.760 projects until after World War two had ended. Now, before 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:30.720 the war, Shockley had actually worked with a guy named 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:35.480 Walter Brittaine who together they were trying to create this 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:40.200 alternative to vacuum tube technology, a solid state alternative to 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.680 vacuum tube amplifiers. But while they were working on it, 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.320 it didn't go anywhere. They couldn't create something that was 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.960 actually working. Then the war happened and their attentions were elsewhere. 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.520 But after the war, Shockley decided to try this again. 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.000 They brought on another theorist over to Bell Labs named 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:03.600 John Bardine now Bardein and Britain we're starting to work 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.280 together closely to try and create this alternative vacuum tubes. 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:13.000 And Shockley was the administrative leader for their team, but 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:16.600 he was mostly working on his own, on his own 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.320 little processes and inventions, so he would occasionally stop in 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.879 see what the two were working on, give some guidance 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:27.359 or maybe some suggestions, and then he would head off 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.679 and work on his own some more so, he was 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:35.080 not actually part of the team that on December six, 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:40.680 ninety seven unveiled the first working transistor, a solid state 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.240 alternative to vacuum tube technology. In staid that was Britain 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.520 and Bardin who created that first point contact resist transistor, 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.640 and that would become the foundation for the electronics industry. 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.760 The transistor. That is not the point contact version, just 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:01.400 the transistor in general. And I've done episodes about transistor, 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:03.200 so I'm not going to talk about it too much. 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:07.159 But the reason our electronics are so small is because 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:11.280 engineers developed the transistor. Otherwise we would still be dependent 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:13.800 upon vacuum tubes, and that would really limit the types 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.119 of technology we could have at our disposal because they 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:20.680 would be so bulky and hot. Uh So it really 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:26.200 did open up an enormous world of opportunity for really 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.280 everyone ultimately, but especially a T and T early on 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:36.520 now Shockley reportedly had a complicated reaction to the development 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:39.920 of this first transistor. On one hand, he was really 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:42.520 proud of his team. He was leading a team that 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:47.480 had made a major scientific and engineering breakthrough with the 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:51.880 invention of the transistor. But on the other end, he 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:55.520 was a little disappointed and frustrated that he was not 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.600 directly part of this team. And he also had his 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:01.159 pride hurt quite a bit because he had attempted to 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:04.120 do the same thing before World War Two but could 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:06.560 never get it to work. But these other two guys, 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.280 they got it to work. So I am a feeling 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:12.080 that he felt a little upset that he did not 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:16.680 come up with the solution to this problem, rather these 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.840 other two guys did. He didn't let that completely derail him. However, 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.880 while he was in a hotel room in Chicago, where 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:29.040 he was attending the American Physical Society convention, he came 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.399 up with an alternative to the point contact transistor called 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:37.119 the sandwich transistor, which was easier to manufacture than the 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.840 point contact type, so it ended up immediately being a 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.840 replacement for this initial design of transistors. It did the 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.800 same thing in a different form factor. So while he 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:52.679 was a little might have been a little bitter about 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:55.880 not being in on the team when they made this breakthrough, 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:00.439 he then immediately almost made an improvement to the designed 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.320 to make it more practical. A T and T made 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.960 a decision. It was kind of a political decision on 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.600 the back end, because you had Britain and Bardine, who 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:14.119 were the two guys who actually invented the transistor. But 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:17.320 then you had Shockley, who was the administrative lead of 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.920 the team and who had at least had some input, 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.720 although not directly responsible for the invention, and A T. 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:26.800 Wanted to make sure they didn't step on any toes, 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.120 so they made a decision where they said that any 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:33.760 photo of the transistor that was to include the development 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:37.320 team would also have to have Shockley in it, sort 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:41.159 of as an uh a way of saying his contributions 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:45.920 were important or instrumental for the development of the transistor. Now, 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:48.600 this also tended to rub other people the wrong way, 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.199 people who said he didn't have nearly enough involvement to 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:57.000 justify being in every single photo of this transistor. So 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:01.040 it created a little bit of drama. And also Shockley 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:05.040 was reportedly difficult to work with at times. He had 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:10.879 a very um, forceful and somewhat brusque personality that people 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:16.680 didn't always enjoy being around. I'm dancing around it a lot, 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:20.119 but it's largely because I never met Shockley, so I 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.960 can't tell any firsthand information. I'm merely reporting what other 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.840 people have said and even third and fourth hand accounts 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:29.480 of that sort of stuff. So I like to be 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.440 careful and not put too many words and too many 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:37.040 people's mouths if I can. Shockley, to his credit, always 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.080 tried to make sure that any stories that were about 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:43.840 this transistor indicated that Britaine and Bardine had been the 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:46.639 ones to make the breakthrough so he wasn't trying to 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:50.359 steal credit, he wasn't claiming it for his own. He 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.320 wanted to make sure that the people responsible were credited 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.960 with their work. But often Shockley would be cited as 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:01.640 the primary or sometimes sole inventor of the transistor. That 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:05.280 the narrative sort of became. He had been working on it, 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:09.840 he was derailed by World War two, came back and 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:12.320 now it's a thing, and he would point out that's 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:15.639 an oversimplification of what had happened in many different respects. 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:19.080 And in nineteen fifty six he was awarded the Nobel 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:22.719 Prize in Physics for his work on the transistor, along 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:25.640 with Britain and Bardin. But the fact that he also 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.400 got a Nobel Prize for this when he wasn't directly 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:32.280 involved with the invention of the first working transistor again 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:41.120 upset some people. Uh Shockley would end up completely alienating 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:44.480 himself from Britain and Bardein. Neither of them wanted to 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:46.679 work with him anymore. They felt felt that it was 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:51.320 a difficult working relationship. Um Bartein would and Britain would 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.520 actually both refuse to work with Shockley, and in nineteen 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:59.040 fifty three Shockley himself left Bell Labs, and first he 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:01.959 went back to cal Tech and he worked there for 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:04.440 a while, but he was looking for something more permanent, 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:10.920 and then he encountered a financier named Arnold Beckman, and 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:15.600 with Beckman's help and some funding, Shockley founded a new 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:21.920 company in California called the Shockley Semiconductor Company. They picked 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:26.080 a location near Stanford in northern California. Shockley thought that 0:23:26.080 --> 0:23:30.639 that was an attractive spot, that the the the weather, 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:34.119 the climate there was really nice. The location was beautiful. 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:36.760 It was close to Stanford, so it would make it 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:41.000 easy to recruit students who are already at Stanford directly 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.840 out of school to come work at at Shockley Semiconductor. 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:48.560 So he thought of this as a y strategy. And 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:51.320 in fact, Shockley had a reputation for being able to 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:57.400 recognize brilliant scientists and engineers. Maybe he couldn't manage them 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:00.440 because of his personality, but he certainly could wrecking eys them, 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:02.880 and so he was really good at recruiting people who 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:08.080 would be very very strong performers in the semiconductor industry. 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:14.240 By the way, Shockley Semiconductor would become the second company 0:24:14.359 --> 0:24:18.400 in Silicon Valley, the This is the early early days 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:22.639 of Silicon Valley, before you had countless companies there. And 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:26.920 Shockley Semiconductor was the second such company in Silicon Valley. 0:24:26.960 --> 0:24:30.199 The first one was Hewitt Packard, which was found in 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:34.239 a Palo Alto garage back in nineteen thirty nine and 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:38.040 really set the standard for for founding a company in 0:24:38.080 --> 0:24:41.040 Silicon Valley. There were so many companies that were founded 0:24:41.080 --> 0:24:44.600 in garages from that point forward, some of them in 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:48.240 Silicon Valley, some of them in other places. So Apple Computers, 0:24:48.560 --> 0:24:52.640 for example, founded in a garage in Palo Alto, California. 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:55.840 Microsoft also founded in a garage, but that time we're 0:24:55.880 --> 0:24:59.640 talking more about Washington, not about California. Still same kind 0:24:59.640 --> 0:25:04.560 of thing. Ing, uh, well, you got YOUWITTT. Packard that 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:07.320 paved the way back in ninety nine. And then Shockley 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:10.840 Semiconductor becoming the second company in Silicon Valley. This was 0:25:10.920 --> 0:25:15.520 before it had even developed that name. And Shockley, always 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:18.800 good at recognizing strong talent, hired on some brilliant people 0:25:18.840 --> 0:25:22.359 to join his team. And two of those people, we're 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:26.159 Gordon Moore and Robert Noisce who would eventually go on 0:25:26.320 --> 0:25:31.400 to found Intel. But we're not there yet as long 0:25:31.440 --> 0:25:35.119 as I've talked about Shockley Semiconductor, we haven't gotten to 0:25:35.119 --> 0:25:38.640