Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. In yesterday's news episode, I opened the show
Speaker 1: by talking about the passing of Gordon Moore, an important
Speaker 1: figure in the world of tech today. I thought we'd
Speaker 1: look a little bit into his history and talk about
Speaker 1: the man and where he came from and some of
Speaker 1: his contributions to technology. Along the way, we'll learn why
Speaker 1: he was dubbed traitorous by a former employer, along with
Speaker 1: seven of his co workers. We'll talk a bit about
Speaker 1: Moore's law and what that originally meant versus how we
Speaker 1: typically interpret it today, and of course we'll chat a
Speaker 1: bit about a tiny little company he co found called Intel.
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore was born on January third, nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: That would turn out to be a pretty darn eventful year,
Speaker 1: because in August the world would enter the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: which would affect the economy for a full decade. Fortunately
Speaker 1: for the Moore family, they were not you know, Wall
Speaker 1: Street investors. They didn't lose their shirts in the Great Depression. Now,
Speaker 1: his father was a deputy sheriff of a little town
Speaker 1: called Pescadero, which was on the coast of California, so
Speaker 1: just a little bit south of San Francisco, and his
Speaker 1: mother ran a general store in town, so his family
Speaker 1: was not as directly hit by the depression as many
Speaker 1: others were. Now. Early on, Gordon Moore said that his
Speaker 1: ambition was to become a teacher. He was very interested
Speaker 1: in science, specifically in chemistry, and he enrolled in San
Speaker 1: Jose State College, and that's where he would meet his
Speaker 1: future wife, Betty Whittaker. The two would be married for
Speaker 1: more than seventy years. They actually got married in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: That was the same year that Moore had graduated with
Speaker 1: his undergrad degree. He had transferred to the University of California,
Speaker 1: Berkeley and completed his undergrad degree there, and he earned
Speaker 1: his degree in chemistry. He then continued his studies at
Speaker 1: cal Tech. He had postgraduate work and Moore would earn
Speaker 1: a doctorate, also in chemistry. Rather than pursue a career
Speaker 1: in teaching, he applied for a position at Dow Chemical. However,
Speaker 1: accloid Moore during a psychological evaluation for the part of
Speaker 1: the hiring process, a Dow representative determined that More didn't
Speaker 1: have what it takes to be a manager. They said
Speaker 1: that his technical skills were suitable, that he had strong
Speaker 1: skills in the field of science, but that he would
Speaker 1: not make a good manager. Considering what would happen later
Speaker 1: in Moore's life, this assessment should go down as one
Speaker 1: of the dumbest ones in tech history. But hey, once
Speaker 1: upon a time I worked for consultants who would do
Speaker 1: things like leadership assessments, and based upon the stuff that
Speaker 1: I was reading, my own personal opinion is a lot
Speaker 1: of those assessments are based on who he Again, that's
Speaker 1: my own personal opinion, and I could be totally wrong
Speaker 1: about that. I just got very jaded about it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the story. More needed a gig, So then
Speaker 1: he took a position at Johns Hopkins University. But this
Speaker 1: is in Baltimore. He joined their applied physics Laboratory. But
Speaker 1: you know, Baltimore is in Maryland. That's on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of the United States from California. So he was
Speaker 1: about as far away as he could get from his
Speaker 1: home while still being in the United States. And Moore's
Speaker 1: extended family still lived out in California, so he didn't
Speaker 1: really like working on the East Coast. So even though
Speaker 1: he had steady work, he kept looking for opportunities that
Speaker 1: would let him move back across the United States to
Speaker 1: the West Coast, and one such opportunity arose at the
Speaker 1: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Now this lab had Ernest Lawrence and
Speaker 1: Edward Teller as co founders. Now those names might not
Speaker 1: mean anything to you, but Edward Teller in particular is
Speaker 1: also sometimes referred to as the father of the hydrogen bomb.
Speaker 1: Though he didn't He didn't like that. He was a
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist and was notoriously difficult to work with. He
Speaker 1: also earned a bad and arguably unjustified reputation after testifying
Speaker 1: in a hear to determine whether or not Robert Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: should have his security clearance revoked. Teller was of the
Speaker 1: opinion that it should, and ultimately it was. Anyway, episode
Speaker 1: is not about Edward Teller. I will have to do
Speaker 1: another one about Teller in the future. I think I've
Speaker 1: talked about him in past episodes. I'm certain I have,
Speaker 1: and things like episodes about the Manhattan Project. But the
Speaker 1: Livermore Lab was known primarily for work involving the research
Speaker 1: and development of nuclear weapons. So Gordon Moore had this
Speaker 1: opportunity to go and work for the Livermore Lab, and
Speaker 1: he thought about this and ultimately decided that he was
Speaker 1: not keen on the idea of working in the field
Speaker 1: of nuclear weapons research and development. And you know, even
Speaker 1: though he had the skills in chemistry and he had
Speaker 1: a good understanding of physics, he just didn't feel right
Speaker 1: about dedicating his expertise toward making things go boom. But
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six he got a different opportunity with a
Speaker 1: brand new startup division a company that was called Shockley Semiconductor.
Speaker 1: This was a division of another company called Beckman Instruments Incorporated.
Speaker 1: So the founder of the parent company, Arnold O. Beckman,
Speaker 1: was a chemist and inventor who saw a potential in
Speaker 1: a brand new technology, one that was developed under the
Speaker 1: management of William Shockley when he was working at Bell Labs.
Speaker 1: This would be in the very late nineteen forties. Now
Speaker 1: I've talked about William Shockley in old episodes of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: He led a solid state physics group in Bell Labs,
Speaker 1: and under his watch that lab produced the world's first transistor.
Speaker 1: It is impossible for me to overstate how important the
Speaker 1: transistor is, how important it was, and how important it
Speaker 1: continues to be. It really is the basis for all
Speaker 1: of electronics moving forward from that point. So to call
Speaker 1: it a pivotal moment is being, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: is kind of downplaying it. Really, Transistors can do all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff that's useful in circuits, but like the
Speaker 1: basic ones, or things like being a way to direct
Speaker 1: electricity so that it flows along a specific path, or
Speaker 1: to act as a switch to stop electricity from passing
Speaker 1: through certain places, to being able to amplify a weak
Speaker 1: signal into a stronger signal. Transistors would replace things that
Speaker 1: were much larger components like vacuum tubes. So this meant
Speaker 1: that the transistor would make it possible to miniaturize components
Speaker 1: and create integrated electronics. So this is what allowed for
Speaker 1: the era of miniaturization. When you hear things like a
Speaker 1: transistor radio that was based upon this technology, and it
Speaker 1: meant that a radio no longer had to be like
Speaker 1: a piece of furniture that was large and had to
Speaker 1: sit either on top of a table or heck, it
Speaker 1: might have been its own cabinet in the old radio days,
Speaker 1: to something that you could fit in your pocket. That
Speaker 1: would be what transistors would make possible, and it would
Speaker 1: transform the technological world. So William Shockley his team developed
Speaker 1: the very first transistor, and his research served as sort
Speaker 1: of the foundation for this work. But it was actually
Speaker 1: two of his lab text two of his employees who
Speaker 1: did the actual building. It was John Bardeen and Walter Bretagne,
Speaker 1: two of Shockley's team who created the first working transistor.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of animosity between Shockley and his team,
Speaker 1: with disagreements regarding who should get credit for the invention
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Shockley was always upset whenever
Speaker 1: there were patents being filed for technologies that came out
Speaker 1: of his lab that didn't have his name on it,
Speaker 1: and then his team members would often bristle at that
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, but you didn't do it, so your
Speaker 1: name shouldn't be on it. And it just turned out
Speaker 1: that Shockley, like Edward Teller, was also notoriously difficult to
Speaker 1: work with anyway. Putting aside his managerial limitations, Shockley had
Speaker 1: received some support from Beckman to create Shockley Semiconductor Beckman
Speaker 1: recognized that the semiconductor industry was going to be the
Speaker 1: next really big thing, and he wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that he had a handle on it. So he felt
Speaker 1: that it was important to have Shockley be able to
Speaker 1: establish his own company. Although he had some reservations about
Speaker 1: Shockley's ability to lead people, it turns out those reservations
Speaker 1: were well founded. One thing Shockley did have, though, was
Speaker 1: a really good eye for talent. He started to recruit
Speaker 1: very bright prospects. Folks fresh out of postgraduate studies who
Speaker 1: were on the cutting edge of scientific research were among
Speaker 1: the top candidates. One person he had his zion was
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore. Gordon Moore was someone that Shockley approached during
Speaker 1: a meeting of the American Physical Society, so he actually
Speaker 1: recruited more in person. In other cases, he reached out
Speaker 1: to various West Coast post graduates, and in a few
Speaker 1: cases he actually got attention by running advertising in the
Speaker 1: Northeast because at the time, the semiconductor transistor world was
Speaker 1: sort of coalescing in the New York area. That's where
Speaker 1: Bell Labs was located. So that was a challenge because
Speaker 1: Shockley was locating his lab on the West coast. So
Speaker 1: to attract more talent, he actually ran essentially classified ads
Speaker 1: in newspapers in the Northeast to attract people. And so
Speaker 1: this initial group came together to become the first team
Speaker 1: at Shockley Semiconductor. All right, I've got more to say
Speaker 1: about what happened over at Shockley and how Moore's career
Speaker 1: would go from there. But before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Okay, So Gordon Moore joins
Speaker 1: a team along with a bunch of other notable people
Speaker 1: in technology over at Shockley Semiconductor, and it would not
Speaker 1: take long for things to go sour. More and his
Speaker 1: co workers faced very tough conditions. They didn't always agree
Speaker 1: with each other. For one thing, they had different ideas
Speaker 1: of what the best approach was toward developing semiconductors and transistors,
Speaker 1: so there was some disagreement even within their community of coworkers.
Speaker 1: But more than that, William Shockley was an aggressive, autocratic,
Speaker 1: and paranoid employer. I get the sense that he felt
Speaker 1: the need to be the smartest person in the room.
Speaker 1: But then he also gathered together talent for his pledgling
Speaker 1: company that consisted of some of the brightest minds and
Speaker 1: science and engineering of the day. He reportedly distrusted the
Speaker 1: work that his team created and would send the output
Speaker 1: to contexts that he still had at Bell Labs to
Speaker 1: double check their work. Which if you are, you know,
Speaker 1: like a pre eminent researcher in your field, you are
Speaker 1: going to be insulted if your employer says, well, let
Speaker 1: me just send this off to a competitor to double
Speaker 1: check your numbers. Shockley also insisted on testing each person
Speaker 1: with psychological analysis before hiring them on which you know,
Speaker 1: and Moore had already gone through when he had applied
Speaker 1: for dal Chemical. William Shockley also allegedly planned to force
Speaker 1: his entire team to submit to a lie detector test
Speaker 1: at one point, but because everyone objected to it, he
Speaker 1: let it drop. And I know that I talk a
Speaker 1: lot about demanding bosses in tech, you know, folks like
Speaker 1: Tim Cook or Elon Musk, who would demand that employees
Speaker 1: returned to the office. But honestly, when you look at
Speaker 1: what William Shockley did, they ain't got nothing on him.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Gordon Moore had joined Shockley Semiconductor in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six. By mid nineteen fifty seven, things had approached
Speaker 1: a point where they were intolerable. So more, with the
Speaker 1: support of several of his compatriots, met with Arnold Beckman,
Speaker 1: the founder of the parent company that Shockley Semiconductor was under,
Speaker 1: and he said, Hey, either Shockley goes or we go.
Speaker 1: We cannot continue this. You need to remove Shockley from
Speaker 1: being in a management position, put someone who has actual
Speaker 1: management experience in his role, and I don't know, give
Speaker 1: Shockley like a really cushy professor position at some university.
Speaker 1: But Beckman declined to acquiesce to this request, and so
Speaker 1: in September nineteen fifty seven, Gordon Moore and seven others
Speaker 1: who were important people with Shockley Semiconductor left and founded
Speaker 1: a new company with the help of a wealthy entrepreneur
Speaker 1: named Sherman Fairchild. Fairchild already had a couple of companies
Speaker 1: to his name, including a camera company that worked closely
Speaker 1: with the military, and so they created a division called
Speaker 1: Fairchild Semiconductor. These eight defectors from Shockley Semiconductor became known
Speaker 1: as the Traitorous Eight, though I don't know if Shockley
Speaker 1: himself ever referred to them as the Traitors Eight. Shockley
Speaker 1: would go on to alienate a lot more people and
Speaker 1: sadly adopted increasingly extremist views as he got older, including
Speaker 1: an interest in eugenics. But we'll leave him behind because
Speaker 1: Gord Moorscher did. Now, if everyone within the eight were
Speaker 1: on good terms with each other and were in agreement
Speaker 1: with what the best approach to semiconductors and integrated circuits was,
Speaker 1: our story would likely pretty much stay with Fairchild Semiconductor
Speaker 1: from here on out. But they didn't. There were disagreements.
Speaker 1: There were different teams that were focused on different pathways
Speaker 1: toward a goal, pathways that were not compatible with one another,
Speaker 1: and so there were disagreements between the different teams about
Speaker 1: which design or methodology was the best one to pursue,
Speaker 1: which one was going to create the superior product, and
Speaker 1: things got pretty heated. They did have some unifying beliefs.
Speaker 1: There were things that the whole team agreed upon, and
Speaker 1: one of those was that silicon was going to be
Speaker 1: the semiconductor material of the future. So at the time,
Speaker 1: most research labs were working with germanium as the material
Speaker 1: for semiconductors. But silicon is really very cheap. It is
Speaker 1: like essentially sand, It's plentiful, it is not expensive, and
Speaker 1: the group argued that it would allow for cheaper electronics
Speaker 1: once you reached a point where the integrated circus you
Speaker 1: were building were reliable and efficient, which would require a
Speaker 1: lot of R and D to get there. But they
Speaker 1: saw silicon as being the most promising of the materials
Speaker 1: and something that would ultimately be scalable, that you would
Speaker 1: be able to build much more complicated electronics using silicon
Speaker 1: because of, you know, the fact that it's cheap and
Speaker 1: plentiful and it wouldn't be holding you back. So they
Speaker 1: were talking about a future where electronics would become so
Speaker 1: inexpensive that it would actually be less costly to just
Speaker 1: go out and buy a new whatever it was, rather
Speaker 1: than to have your broken one repaired. World's turn on
Speaker 1: such thoughts. Fairchild Semiconductor began producing transistors and found customers
Speaker 1: in the form of other big companies like IBM, so
Speaker 1: Fairchild was not selling stuff straight to consumers. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: go into your store and buy a fair Child Semiconductor product.
Speaker 1: Instead other companies that would use these components to build
Speaker 1: out their products, which you might possibly buy, although IBM
Speaker 1: wasn't selling directly to consumers at that time either, so
Speaker 1: the computer systems they were designing were for big companies
Speaker 1: or the military. In fact, one of the earliest uses
Speaker 1: for Fairchild semiconductors was in a computer system that was
Speaker 1: for a military bomber. One of Gordon Moore's co workers
Speaker 1: and also someone with whom Moore would clash, was Jean Hoernie. Now,
Speaker 1: Jean developed a new process for transistor manufacturing that improved
Speaker 1: reliability and performance, and all Gordy and Jean were leading
Speaker 1: to different groups that we're working on different approaches to transistors,
Speaker 1: and this would cause a bit of a divide, especially
Speaker 1: since Gordon Moore had the ear of Robert Noyce, who
Speaker 1: was kind of seen as a leader within the group.
Speaker 1: So Moore was able to get his projects moved forward,
Speaker 1: sometimes at the expense or at least perceived to be
Speaker 1: at the expense of others like Jean hoo Ernie, and
Speaker 1: so there was tension within the group. By nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: the Fairchild team oversaw the development of a silicon wafer
Speaker 1: containing a four transistor circuit on it. This was a
Speaker 1: huge deal. I mean, four transistors is nothing today, all right,
Speaker 1: We're talking about we're in an era where billions of
Speaker 1: components are on a microprocessor we have far far outstripped
Speaker 1: the capabilities of the nineteen sixty four transistor circuit, but
Speaker 1: at the time it was truly a remarkable achievement. It
Speaker 1: was the first integrated circuit that used silicon as the
Speaker 1: semiconductor material. So fair Child was not the first company
Speaker 1: to develop an integrated circuit, because Texas Instruments had already
Speaker 1: done it. Jack Kilby had created an integrated circuit, but
Speaker 1: that one used germanium as the semiconductor material, and he
Speaker 1: had done that back in nineteen fifty eight. The fair
Speaker 1: Child integrated circuit was the first to use silicon, and
Speaker 1: unlike germanium, silicon was much more cheap and plentiful and
Speaker 1: thus scalable. It made integrated circuits a viable technology for
Speaker 1: all sorts of applications, including cheap electronics. So again, this
Speaker 1: was one of those developed ments that would really shape
Speaker 1: the way technology would evolve from that point forward. By
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixty one, the Traitorous eight had split into
Speaker 1: two groups of four because four of the eight would
Speaker 1: leave Fairchild Semiconductor and join a different company called Amelco,
Speaker 1: but Gordon Moore stayed with Fairchild along with Robert Noise,
Speaker 1: and they continued to work on integrated circuits at Fairchild Semiconductor.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, Gordon More submitted an article to
Speaker 1: the journal Electronics that would forever be associated with him.
Speaker 1: That article has the title Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,
Speaker 1: but the observation More made in that article would later
Speaker 1: be dubbed by Carver Mead of cal Tech as Moore's Law.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more about Moore's law when we come back
Speaker 1: from this quick break. Okay, So if you read Cramming
Speaker 1: More Components onto Integrated Circuits, which you can do. The
Speaker 1: article is freely available on the internet. You can just
Speaker 1: search for that title or search Gordon More article. They'll
Speaker 1: find lots of links to it. Moore has a couple
Speaker 1: of bangers right out of the gate. I mean, you
Speaker 1: might not think of them as that exciting, but I
Speaker 1: think they were incredibly prescient. So the opening statement says, quote,
Speaker 1: with unit cost falling as the number of components per
Speaker 1: circuit rises by nineteen seventy five, economics may dictate squeezing
Speaker 1: as many as sixty five thousand components on a single
Speaker 1: silicon chip end quote. He also says at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the article quote the future of integrated electronics is
Speaker 1: the future of electronics itself end quote. And yeah, these
Speaker 1: were really good observations. So what the heck is this
Speaker 1: article all about. It's mostly covering how economics push companies
Speaker 1: to develop increasingly smaller components for integrated circuits and how
Speaker 1: those circuits power new kinds of electronics, and this perpetuates
Speaker 1: the need to pour more money into developing ways to
Speaker 1: cram even more components onto an inch of silicon wafer
Speaker 1: like a square inch of silicon wafer. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's the cycle of being able to create more powerful chips,
Speaker 1: which then drives down the cost per component on the chip.
Speaker 1: The chips themselves might get more expensive, but the components
Speaker 1: get less expensive the actual individual components on the chip
Speaker 1: do and that this in turn creates the ability for
Speaker 1: companies to make cheaper electronics, which goes onto fuel the
Speaker 1: development cycle. So again, this cyclical pattern that allows for
Speaker 1: the progression of of chip development. So balancing this out
Speaker 1: is the scale of production and the ability to integrate
Speaker 1: these circuits into different products. So it almost becomes like
Speaker 1: a you can make it up in volume, because even
Speaker 1: though the component price might go down. The fact that
Speaker 1: you're putting more components on a chip means the individual
Speaker 1: chip might get more expensive to make. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: per component, you're spending less, but then you're cramming way
Speaker 1: more components on a chip, so you spend more. And
Speaker 1: like I said, you have to find that sweet spot,
Speaker 1: that spot where the cost of manufacturing makes sense and
Speaker 1: that you're able to achieve profit by integrating that circuit
Speaker 1: into whatever electronic product you're pushing out there. Then more
Speaker 1: makes another observation that quote the complexity for minimum component
Speaker 1: costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor
Speaker 1: of two per year end quote. So here he's talking
Speaker 1: about how using the most cost effective means of producing
Speaker 1: integrated circuits, you would expect to see circuit complexity double
Speaker 1: every year, at least over the short term. And he
Speaker 1: does acknowledge that this should change a little bit over time,
Speaker 1: but that within ten years time from the publication of
Speaker 1: the article quote, the number of components per integrated circuit
Speaker 1: for minimum costs will be sixty five thousand end quote.
Speaker 1: So again he's saying that based upon what we're seeing
Speaker 1: right now, we should see the number of components on
Speaker 1: a square inch of silicon chip double every year. Eventually
Speaker 1: it would be every two years. So the entire article,
Speaker 1: like I said's available online. You can read the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and it does touch on some other elements besides the
Speaker 1: economic factors that drive the development in the first place,
Speaker 1: including stuff like dealing with the heat that's generated by
Speaker 1: an integrated circuit that has tens of thousands of components
Speaker 1: that are all crammed next to each other. But later
Speaker 1: on people would reframe More's observation a bit and they
Speaker 1: started to look at it from a slightly different angle.
Speaker 1: So instead of talking about the economic factors that would
Speaker 1: allow for this to happen and ultimately would result in
Speaker 1: cheaper electronics, they saw it as every two years, companies
Speaker 1: double the number of components. Typically we're talking about transistors
Speaker 1: that they can fit on a silicon wafer. Later on,
Speaker 1: people would reframe it even more and say that essentially
Speaker 1: this means that computer companies double the processing power or
Speaker 1: in some cases, processing speed every two years. So you
Speaker 1: could say that if you order to buy a brand
Speaker 1: new computer today, that brand new computer would be twice
Speaker 1: as powerful as a similar model that you had purchased
Speaker 1: two years earlier. Now this also depends upon how you
Speaker 1: define powerful, So there's there's a lot of wiggle room
Speaker 1: for a law. Most laws don't allow for that much
Speaker 1: wiggle room, but Moore's law does. But again, it's because
Speaker 1: this all stems from an observation about the economics of
Speaker 1: producing semiconductor chips. It has since been seen as a
Speaker 1: benchmark that semiconductor companies aim to maintain. There's this pressure
Speaker 1: to keep up with the demands or expectations that have
Speaker 1: been set by Moore's law. Now everyone pretty much acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this trend is not infinitely sustainable, and that we're
Speaker 1: already bumping up against the physical limits of what we
Speaker 1: can do with traditional microchip architecture. But there is still
Speaker 1: this compulsion to keep the spirit of Moore's law going.
Speaker 1: No one wants to be the one to say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we had a good run. From here on out, we're
Speaker 1: not going to see progress at that same rate. It
Speaker 1: will still see progress, but it's going to slow down.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be every four or five years instead of
Speaker 1: every two. Now I'm fairly sure that at the time
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore had no idea how widely known his observation
Speaker 1: would become or the incredible impact it would have on
Speaker 1: the tech sector. But we're not finished with Gordon Moore yet.
Speaker 1: So nineteen sixty five, he publishes this article. At that time,
Speaker 1: he was still hard at work at Fairchild semi Conductor,
Speaker 1: but things were a bit rocky over there. For a
Speaker 1: few years, Fairchild was performing pretty well in the tech
Speaker 1: sector because it didn't have that many competitors in the space,
Speaker 1: but as the late nineteen sixties approached, that was starting
Speaker 1: to change. And not helping things were some leadership struggles
Speaker 1: that were happening within Fairchild. So again, one of Moore's
Speaker 1: fellow Traitorous Eight members, Robert Noyce, had really been acting
Speaker 1: as a leader among that group, and it was clear
Speaker 1: that he was seeking a leadership position at Fairchild as well.
Speaker 1: But Fairchild had based its executive team out of its
Speaker 1: main company, which was on the East Coast. So in
Speaker 1: other words, the people who were overseeing Fairchild Semiconductor, they
Speaker 1: weren't even located on the same coast as Fairchild Semiconductor.
Speaker 1: They were managing it from across the United States. You know,
Speaker 1: this is back in the nineteen sixties, right, So there
Speaker 1: was a real disconnect there. You had people at Fairchild
Speaker 1: Semiconductor who felt that their executives had no real touch
Speaker 1: on anything that they were doing, and therefore they weren't
Speaker 1: really the right people to be placed in leadership positions.
Speaker 1: There were also concerns about things like stock options, stuff
Speaker 1: like that that compensation packages for a fair Child Semiconductor
Speaker 1: were not equal to the amount of work the amount
Speaker 1: of profit their division was contributing to the overall company.
Speaker 1: So there was this feeling that Fairchild Semiconductor was making
Speaker 1: a lot of money for Fairchild, but that they weren't
Speaker 1: being recognized for that, and in turn that Fairchild CEO
Speaker 1: was using profits from the semiconductor division to fund acquisitions that,
Speaker 1: to put it lightly, did not pan out. So Noise
Speaker 1: and more were feeling like their work was being exploited
Speaker 1: to fund bad business decisions, and also that they weren't
Speaker 1: really being compensated properly. By nineteen sixty seven, the overall
Speaker 1: Fairchild company wasn't doing well and the board of directors
Speaker 1: told its CEO to divest the company of those unprofitable acquisitions.
Speaker 1: So at that point the CEO resigned and the board
Speaker 1: very pointedly decided to avoid Noise as a replacement, even
Speaker 1: though Noise had to step in at one point as
Speaker 1: part of a management committee to lead fair Child Semiconductor
Speaker 1: after the planned replacement a guy named Richard Hodgson didn't
Speaker 1: pan out, so once Noise found out that there was
Speaker 1: no chance he was going to get the job, even
Speaker 1: after he had to step into handle the mess that
Speaker 1: was left by the temporary CEO, he said, that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm out of here, and he convinced More to do
Speaker 1: the same. So the two ended up resigning from fair
Speaker 1: Child Semiconductor. They did this in nineteen sixty eight, and
Speaker 1: they turned to an investor they knew by the name
Speaker 1: of Arthur Rock, and together the three of them were
Speaker 1: able to secure funding to found a new company. And
Speaker 1: then the question came up, as what do we call
Speaker 1: this new company. It's going to be a company that
Speaker 1: makes semiconductors and transistors and integrated circuits, but what do
Speaker 1: we call it. The first idea they dismissed right away,
Speaker 1: which was to call it the more Noise Company. And
Speaker 1: if you are going to buy electronic components, you probably
Speaker 1: don't want to think about more noise than you know
Speaker 1: competing products might have, right, So instead they went with
Speaker 1: m Electronics or sometimes it was m in Electronics, but
Speaker 1: that was a very temporary name. By the end of
Speaker 1: the month, they had decided to change their company name
Speaker 1: so that it would reflect what they were focusing on,
Speaker 1: which were integrated electronics. So they wanted to call it Intel.
Speaker 1: And there was one small hiccup, which was that there
Speaker 1: was already a hotel chain called Intel Co. That had
Speaker 1: trademarked the term Intel, so they had to actually negotiate
Speaker 1: with Intelco. And purchase the rights to Intel, which they
Speaker 1: did do and they were able to create their new company.
Speaker 1: So the early focus for Intel was developing stuff like
Speaker 1: metal oxide semiconductor or MOSS technologies. More would later say
Speaker 1: that it was the perfect timing to get into that business,
Speaker 1: that MOSS was a technology that was just difficult enough
Speaker 1: to require ingenuity and innovation, but not so difficult that
Speaker 1: a startup would just falter right away while trying to
Speaker 1: develop the tech, Intel became known for developing memory chips
Speaker 1: in those early days. Memory is where computers store data
Speaker 1: for the purposes of operations, and there are different kinds
Speaker 1: of memory. So there's like ROM that refers to read
Speaker 1: only memory, so that's memory that holds data that a
Speaker 1: computer can read from, but the computer cannot overwrite or
Speaker 1: change that data. Then there's RAM, or random access memory.
Speaker 1: This kind of acts like short term memory in people.
Speaker 1: So this is where computers will store data that they
Speaker 1: may soon need for various operations. There are lots of
Speaker 1: different types of RAM, and Intel's work in developing memory
Speaker 1: chips solidified the company's spot in the tech sector, and
Speaker 1: it rapidly became quite successful. While Robert Noyce as the
Speaker 1: corporate leader for the first seven years of Intel's existence,
Speaker 1: he transitioned to become the chairman of the board in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and at that time Gordon Moore became
Speaker 1: Intel's president. Four years later, nineteen seventy nine, Gordon Moore
Speaker 1: became the chairman of the board and the CEO of Intel.
Speaker 1: He would lead the company in that role until nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven. At that point, he resigned as CEO, but
Speaker 1: he remained the chairman of the board. He was named
Speaker 1: chairman emeritus in nineteen ninety seven, and he finally resigned
Speaker 1: his position on the board in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: So he led Intel while the company was really starting
Speaker 1: to become a powerful player in the tech space like
Speaker 1: this is also the time where we started to see
Speaker 1: the emergence of the personal computer and a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that Gordon Moore had predicted, this idea that
Speaker 1: electronics and computer systems would become inexpensive enough for the
Speaker 1: average person to be able to buy them, they were
Speaker 1: becoming true. So the predictions he had made in the
Speaker 1: sixties were starting to be realized in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: and it really showed how his predictions were well founded, right.
Speaker 1: It showed that good Moore had a lot of foresight
Speaker 1: back in the sixties. And yeah, Intel would see even
Speaker 1: greater heights after Moore's leadership. But the success really did
Speaker 1: affect Moore's life significantly. He became a billionaire, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he and his wife established philanthropic and charitable efforts for
Speaker 1: lots of different causes, including things like environmental conservation. That
Speaker 1: was really important to Gordon Moore, and he contributed a
Speaker 1: lot of money to conservation efforts, specifically in the San
Speaker 1: Francisco area, but he also funded science organizations, he funded
Speaker 1: medical organizations. He and his wife were really passionate about
Speaker 1: this and they ended up donating lots and lots like
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars billions, even to philanthropic efforts,
Speaker 1: so he got a big name in that field as well.
Speaker 1: He also was awarded more titles and awards and honorary
Speaker 1: degrees and things of that nature from almost an endless
Speaker 1: list of universities, research centers, and scientific organizations. It's easy
Speaker 1: to understand why because again his pivotal role in creating
Speaker 1: the integrated circuit. Like he was one, he was not
Speaker 1: the only person, he was one person who contributed to that,
Speaker 1: but he consistently was an important figure in that. And
Speaker 1: it's undeniable that the technology we have today it is
Speaker 1: the way it is largely because of Gordon Moore and
Speaker 1: the people he worked with. He retired to the state
Speaker 1: of Hawaii. That's where he passed away on March twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, at the age of ninety four. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he leaves behind an incredible legacy. It sounds to me
Speaker 1: like he wasn't always the easiest person to work with,
Speaker 1: although probably miles easier than people like William Shockley, but
Speaker 1: he definitely had an incredible passion for his work and
Speaker 1: for the science of chemistry. And you know, I really
Speaker 1: find it amazing to see people who are lead researchers
Speaker 1: in a field, in a scientific field, who then are
Speaker 1: able to leverage the things they learn into practical applications.
Speaker 1: Like when you make that transition from science into technology,
Speaker 1: which is just science realized for practical applications, That to
Speaker 1: me is where the magic happens. I know that it's
Speaker 1: a little contradictory. We're not really talking magic, but you
Speaker 1: know kind of what I mean that inspiration that to
Speaker 1: me is a very very human quality. All right, that's
Speaker 1: it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you
Speaker 1: are all well. If you would like to reach out
Speaker 1: to me and suggest a topic for a future episode,
Speaker 1: please do so. You can do so on Twitter. The
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