Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Heyler, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: johns in Strickland and I'm Lauren Bock Obama. Today we
Speaker 1: start a two part series about a very important company
Speaker 1: in technology. But it's one that I would say the
Speaker 1: average person doesn't really know a lot about, right, Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, and it's only important if you've
Speaker 1: ever used a computer or car or a mobile phone
Speaker 1: or yeah, it's only if you've ever used any electronics. Ever,
Speaker 1: is this company actually important? So if you're the luddite
Speaker 1: who hasn't, first of all, how are you getting this podcast?
Speaker 1: And second well, um, okay, but yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: fair Child Semiconductor and you may have heard of this company.
Speaker 1: It actually, like I said, it's it's very important in
Speaker 1: the development of technology as we have have it today.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the the work that they did laid
Speaker 1: the foundation for what makes the technology we use today possible.
Speaker 1: One of their inventions in in what was that? Or
Speaker 1: so is the basic technology that we still use. Right,
Speaker 1: It's one allowed maturization, Right, I mean some of the
Speaker 1: earlier work had already been done before fair fair Child
Speaker 1: became a thing, but or fair child semiconductor, I should say,
Speaker 1: But let's let's start at the beginning. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk so what what is a
Speaker 1: semi conduct That's a good question to ask because we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about them a lot. So a semiconductor
Speaker 1: is kind of I mean, if you think of the word,
Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense. A semiconductor is some sort
Speaker 1: of material that, under certain circumstances, acts as a conductor.
Speaker 1: As an it conducts electricity, does not Yeah, that's more
Speaker 1: like an insulator. It does not conduct electricity. Now, in
Speaker 1: the case of electronics, were usually talking about something that
Speaker 1: has been engineered so that certain parts of it conduct
Speaker 1: electricity effectively, other parts insulate. Again, all out for this
Speaker 1: thing like transistors. Transistors are essentially electron gates. That's where
Speaker 1: you get that that on off switch that one zeros. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. This is what allows us to control the
Speaker 1: flow of electrons through a circuit so that we can
Speaker 1: have various outcomes. So for example, with a microprocessor, where
Speaker 1: you're using something in a in a computer or a
Speaker 1: mobile handset, this is what allows that those logical functions
Speaker 1: to take place, and we use things called logic gates.
Speaker 1: Logic gates are essentially rules that say, when you get
Speaker 1: this kind of input, you will create this kind of output.
Speaker 1: So let's say, here's a really simple example showing the
Speaker 1: one zero concept. Let's say you have two light switches,
Speaker 1: all right, and you have one light bulb, and if
Speaker 1: you flip a light switch to the up position, that's
Speaker 1: technically uh, the number one. Let's say, so, let's say
Speaker 1: you flip both lights, which is up to the number
Speaker 1: one position, and the light bulb comes on, so that
Speaker 1: would be one one one, everything is on. If you
Speaker 1: switch both lights, which is to the off position, that
Speaker 1: would be zero. The light bulb goes off. That's zero
Speaker 1: zero zero. Now, let's say you switch the first light
Speaker 1: switch on, second light switch off, and the light bulb
Speaker 1: comes on. That's one zero one. You do first light
Speaker 1: switch down, second light switch up at zero one, and
Speaker 1: then the light bulb comes on. That's another one. So
Speaker 1: that would be an example of a gate, and you
Speaker 1: can have all different kinds of combinations with that particular gate.
Speaker 1: It could be that when both switches are down, the
Speaker 1: lights on, but in any other combination it's off. That's
Speaker 1: all different types of logic gates. So we create these
Speaker 1: logic gates to create the different scenarios necessary to process data.
Speaker 1: And this data is just in the form of electrons. Now,
Speaker 1: what I explained to you might sound like sorcery, but no, seriously,
Speaker 1: this is the basis of electronics and computers. And uh,
Speaker 1: the fact that we're able to to miniaturize these elements
Speaker 1: to teeny teeny tiny amounts. We're talking the nano scale
Speaker 1: these days is what allows us to have the computers
Speaker 1: and mobile devices that we use today. Otherwise we would
Speaker 1: still be depending upon massive, massive pieces of electronic equipment
Speaker 1: right right, you're you would be tethered to a room
Speaker 1: rather than a cell phone or a building. Tweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're talking back in those days. You know, we're
Speaker 1: just talking circuits, and circuits are just pathways for electricity.
Speaker 1: That's really what a basic circuit is. In the old days,
Speaker 1: you made these pathways out of physical wires and other
Speaker 1: components that were huge, like vacuum tubes. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are big, big things. It was only after the transistor
Speaker 1: was invented that we started to see the possibility of
Speaker 1: moving away from that. And even those earliest transistors weren't
Speaker 1: integrated circuits. They were right. They were pretty bulky. They
Speaker 1: were frequently called Mesa transistors because they slightly resembled Mesa
Speaker 1: settlements in the desert because they were big and blocky
Speaker 1: and weird looking. And yeah, yeah, the very first one
Speaker 1: is practically enormous. I mean you can see pictures of
Speaker 1: it in things like the Computer History Museum. They have
Speaker 1: a replica. Uh. But anyway, one of the three inventors,
Speaker 1: one of the three people we credit with inventing the
Speaker 1: the transistor, was William Bradford Shockley. Uh. And he and
Speaker 1: John Bardeen and Walter H. Brittaine. We're working at Bell Telephone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bell Telephone Labs. So they were over at Bell Labs
Speaker 1: and they created that first semi conductor back in nineteen Now,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four, Shockley left Bell Labs to found
Speaker 1: his own semiconductor factory called Shockley semi Conductors, and he
Speaker 1: hired up all these smart engineers and scientists. He was
Speaker 1: He said, these are the people that are going to
Speaker 1: really push this as an industry. I see the potential here.
Speaker 1: We need to really grab the best and brightest and
Speaker 1: and he knew a lot about that at the time.
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty six he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he was one of the I believe he and a
Speaker 1: couple of others were credited with it. But yes, he
Speaker 1: was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work
Speaker 1: in creating transistors. Yes, sport guy. However, in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: about eight of the twelve brilliant guys that he hired said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not really a fan of your practices
Speaker 1: or management style, or you're kind of a jerk your face. Yeah, okay, So,
Speaker 1: in the interest of full disclosure, Shockley, if you ever
Speaker 1: look him up, held some incredibly controversial and really not
Speaker 1: nice views. I've I've heard him compared to a slightly
Speaker 1: less polite Howard Hughes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're wondering
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, look up William Bradford Shockley. It's
Speaker 1: not really germane to this discussion. So we're not going
Speaker 1: to cover right. Maybe we'll do an episode about him
Speaker 1: some other time. But so so it was important that
Speaker 1: he are these twelve people um and and was concentrating
Speaker 1: them on trying to figure out ways of using um
Speaker 1: uh germanium and silicon, right, yes, because those were the
Speaker 1: materials that seemed to be the most promising for semiconductors.
Speaker 1: And these eight, eight of the twelve decided to leave,
Speaker 1: and of course Shockley, being the understated fellow that he is,
Speaker 1: labeled them the traitorous eight. Yes, which I love. They
Speaker 1: broke my heart. Fredo. So ninety seven, these eight engineers,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna recognize at least one of these names, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'll leave the one that you'll recognize, uh,
Speaker 1: most likely. Last there was A C. Sheldon, Roberts, Eugene Kleiner,
Speaker 1: Robert and Noise. I'm sure some of you recognize that name.
Speaker 1: Victor H. Grinch, Julius Blank, Jean A. Hernie, and J. T. Last,
Speaker 1: the last one is Gordon E. Moore, a k A.
Speaker 1: That guy who came up with Morris Law. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the guy who created Moore's Law, which was of
Speaker 1: course an observation. He had observed that there was this
Speaker 1: tendency for manufacturing companies to cram twice as many components
Speaker 1: onto a square inch silicon chip um every year or so.
Speaker 1: Now we've since reinterpreted that to mean that every two
Speaker 1: years or so, computers get twice as powerful as they
Speaker 1: used to be. Anyway, this he was one of the
Speaker 1: founding members. These guys they decided to leave, and they
Speaker 1: decided they wanted to find found their own company. And
Speaker 1: they approached a company called fair Child Camera and Instrument Corporation,
Speaker 1: which was located located of New York, and they were
Speaker 1: looking to get into superconductors at the time, semi conductors
Speaker 1: at the time. Exact conductors are a different thing, right, right,
Speaker 1: but semiconductors. Yes. By the way, people, we're recording this
Speaker 1: in a very warm room, so there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: verbal stumbles on on the part of both of us,
Speaker 1: and maybe even Tyler, who was sitting in for Noeld today. Hi, Tyler, Tyler,
Speaker 1: Tyler tan waving which is great for radio so um.
Speaker 1: At any rate, they went to Fairchild Camera Instrument Corporation
Speaker 1: and said, hey, guys, I hear that you are looking
Speaker 1: at getting into the semiconductor business. We are very knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about semiconductors. How about we get together and work on this.
Speaker 1: And the fair Child said, uh, maybe, and so they
Speaker 1: kind of drew up an agreement, and in that agreement,
Speaker 1: each of the engineers put five hundred dollars of their
Speaker 1: own money toward this as a stake in the venture,
Speaker 1: and then a fair Child threw in another one and
Speaker 1: a half million, so you know, equal equal parts all around,
Speaker 1: right sure, but yeah, it started. Also the fair Child
Speaker 1: had the option to outright by the company within eight
Speaker 1: years of its starting, and so the cons of that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to read the fine print, guys. Know. So
Speaker 1: in October of seven, fair Child Semiconductor becomes a real thing,
Speaker 1: and it was just the third company that existed in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Um, of course, it wasn't called Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: at the time. It was called Santa Clara Valley to
Speaker 1: anyone who you know, happened to live there. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're wondering what the first one was, that's Hewlett Packard.
Speaker 1: That's technically the first company in Silicon Valley. They and
Speaker 1: you know, unlike the others, uh, they didn't start fair
Speaker 1: Child didn't start in a garage. One of the few
Speaker 1: things to set it apart from every other company that
Speaker 1: ever started in Silicon Valley. They bucked the trend. Of
Speaker 1: course at that point is not a trend, I guess,
Speaker 1: unless you're the Braves, in which case, three games in
Speaker 1: a row is a winning streak, alright, So sure that
Speaker 1: was a harsh dissa. Someone who knows something about baseball.
Speaker 1: They're they've got the highest they've got the best record
Speaker 1: of baseball right now, So I'm it's not really a
Speaker 1: diss okay. So moving on semiconductors. What happens with making one?
Speaker 1: How are they made? So this is a little different
Speaker 1: from the way they were doing it in the earliest
Speaker 1: days at fair Child, But in general, what you have
Speaker 1: to start with is pure silicon. It's very important that
Speaker 1: it's as pure as possible. You wanted to get it
Speaker 1: as close to pure as you possibly can because, uh,
Speaker 1: you're going to be missing with this stuff in the
Speaker 1: in the future. But you know, it's are the ways
Speaker 1: in which it works exactly. So when you start with
Speaker 1: a good pier base that, yeah, that that makes it possible.
Speaker 1: Otherwise your chips are not going to work. You're you're
Speaker 1: going to end up with a huge waste of resources.
Speaker 1: So you grow these pier silkon crystals into kind of
Speaker 1: kind of cylinders. Yeah. Yeah. The way it works is
Speaker 1: you've got this big old vat of of liquid silicon
Speaker 1: and then you dip the pure crystal in it makes
Speaker 1: the rest of the liquid crystallize around into one crystal.
Speaker 1: It's like one solid crystal, which is really fascinating process
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, and then you you draw it
Speaker 1: out and you've got this big old cylindrical ingot is
Speaker 1: what they called them. And then you use a saw
Speaker 1: usually controlled these days by a robot, but it's a
Speaker 1: saw that cuts them the cylinder into wafers or waters
Speaker 1: if you prefer, you know, Monty Python approach. So it's
Speaker 1: waffer thin and you cut a series of wafers through
Speaker 1: this ingot. Each wafer is about point seven five millimeters
Speaker 1: thick and just under twelve inches in diameter, so about
Speaker 1: three millimeters and you cut once. Once you cut that,
Speaker 1: then you're ready to start the diffusion and etching process.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's going well. Actually, first you
Speaker 1: have to polish it, I should say, because you wanted
Speaker 1: to bet with Yeah, you wanted to be as uniform
Speaker 1: as possible, because you're gonna be again making very tiny
Speaker 1: changes to it, particularly these days. Now again, back in
Speaker 1: the fair Child days, you're talking about elements that were
Speaker 1: on the micro scale. Now we're on the nano scale.
Speaker 1: But we'll we'll talk more about why that's important in
Speaker 1: in the next episode. So essentially, what you're doing is
Speaker 1: you're using chemicals to give certain properties to the semiconductor
Speaker 1: and then cut away parts that you don't want. So
Speaker 1: there are two different types of semiconductor material. There's ND
Speaker 1: type and there's P type, which essentially stands for negative
Speaker 1: and positive. The negative types have extra electrons that they
Speaker 1: can give up. The positive types have holes electron holes
Speaker 1: that can accept electrons. This is what allows electricity to
Speaker 1: flow through semiconductor material. So you're actually introducing small amounts
Speaker 1: of impurities. It's called doping, and in this case, it's
Speaker 1: not a bad thing, so you're not gonna get thrown
Speaker 1: out of the Olympics for it, and you probably won't
Speaker 1: go into the Olympics either. But anyway, so you're doing
Speaker 1: this doping process, and it's imagine that you you add
Speaker 1: in a layer of the special stuff that that dopes
Speaker 1: your wafer, uh like ND type, we'll just say N type,
Speaker 1: and then you coate certain parts of the wafer with
Speaker 1: a chemical that's going to protect that layer. Then you
Speaker 1: use a different chemical to etch away anything that was
Speaker 1: not coded, so only the coded stuff remains whole, creating
Speaker 1: a certain pattern on the chip or the wayfer surface
Speaker 1: rather exactly. Then you do another coading. Maybe now it's
Speaker 1: a P coding and again you code it again with
Speaker 1: don't you're like twelve, It's like Cris Palette, she's just
Speaker 1: giggling and looking at me. Yes, it's a P coding
Speaker 1: the letter P, and then you code that with an oxide.
Speaker 1: Again you use the chemicals to etch away all the
Speaker 1: non relevant parts. You do this many, many, many times
Speaker 1: in order for you to make a final uh semiconductor
Speaker 1: chip of whatever it is that you were building. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind this could be lots of different stuff.
Speaker 1: Semi connected material is used in more than just microprocessors.
Speaker 1: It's used in a lot of other basic pieces of electronics,
Speaker 1: but we mostly think of it as microprocessors because that's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I think everyone has some familiarity. So, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the process has done several times in order to get
Speaker 1: exactly what it is you want, and then once that's done,
Speaker 1: then it can go into the next level of processing,
Speaker 1: which usually involves putting in some connectors so that it
Speaker 1: can connect to whatever it is, and then you finish
Speaker 1: it off with whatever covers need to be placed on it,
Speaker 1: then it gets packaged and sent off to wherever it
Speaker 1: needs to go. So that's your basic uh step from
Speaker 1: beginning to end. And so one thing that the fair
Speaker 1: Child folks had come up with was this idea of
Speaker 1: double diffusion. Now that is the process I was talking
Speaker 1: about of introducing those impurities, that doping process, and the
Speaker 1: way that they were doing it was cutting down on
Speaker 1: the processing time that they would need to do. Back
Speaker 1: in the early days, if you wanted to make a transistor,
Speaker 1: you essentially had to do it piece by piece. You
Speaker 1: would get a wafer and you would make one transistor
Speaker 1: and you you know, you end up having that all
Speaker 1: cut out and and done, then you would go back
Speaker 1: to the wafer and make the next one. They found
Speaker 1: a way where they could process this and makes several
Speaker 1: transistors of an entire wafer all at once. So it
Speaker 1: really cut down on the amount of time it took
Speaker 1: to produce transistors, which in turn brought the price down.
Speaker 1: This is what Gordon Moore was talking about when he
Speaker 1: made that observation. He said, we're making improvements in manufacturing
Speaker 1: which is making it possible for us to reduce the
Speaker 1: price of components, which is making it possible to build
Speaker 1: bigger components. So really, when he made that observation, it
Speaker 1: wasn't anything necessarily about computer power or or electronics power.
Speaker 1: It was more about about the actual right, the actual
Speaker 1: physical pieces. And yeah, it was just ultimately all comes
Speaker 1: down to money, which is you know, cheerful. Hey, that
Speaker 1: being said, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright,
Speaker 1: so we're back. Let's talk about the actual history of
Speaker 1: fair Child. So it was founded in nineteen seven. Six
Speaker 1: months later, it was profitable. That's pretty impressive. I mean,
Speaker 1: brand new company, unproven other than the fact that they
Speaker 1: knew they had some of the smartest guys in the
Speaker 1: industry still and also, I mean they made their first
Speaker 1: sales to IBM um for an order of a hundred
Speaker 1: transistors priced at a hundred and fifty bucks a pop, right,
Speaker 1: and that was approximately five million dollars. It was it
Speaker 1: was It was a lot. It was a bunch. Was
Speaker 1: it was bunch. It was a bunch of dollars hundred
Speaker 1: fifty bucks for a hundred transistor, well a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: dollars per transistor for a hundred transistors, all to IBM
Speaker 1: that's a good first client to have. Yeah, sure, not
Speaker 1: too bad. Um My, my favorite part about this story
Speaker 1: is that when they had to ship them, um, j
Speaker 1: Last just ran out to a local supermarket and picked
Speaker 1: up a used Brillow carton. Brillow being that brand of
Speaker 1: scrubby sponges, right all right, you know there's sponges that
Speaker 1: have some steel wool and soap in them. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and he just picked up a used carton and
Speaker 1: they were just like, oh, this is good for transistors
Speaker 1: and pop Yeah, keeping in mind that, you know, these days,
Speaker 1: we have very specific packaging for all this kind of
Speaker 1: cages built in and like plastic that you will never
Speaker 1: ever open without the use of some sort of chainsaw. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like this though. It adds a little, a little
Speaker 1: kind of dash of whimsy to the story. Um. And
Speaker 1: that same year, one of the engineers, Robert Noyce, developed
Speaker 1: the monolithic integrated circuit. Now, this is the invention you
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier in the show, Lauren, the one
Speaker 1: that truly defines the way we use computers and electronics,
Speaker 1: what what makes them what they are, Because it's what
Speaker 1: allowed an entire circuit to be put upon a single
Speaker 1: chip of of silicon. Before it was that you would
Speaker 1: create different components and then wire them all together, which
Speaker 1: meant that you were limited by size. Yeah, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to get too small. But this suddenly created
Speaker 1: the possibility of miniaturization on a level that they had
Speaker 1: never had before. However, um it did mean that, uh,
Speaker 1: there weren't that many customers who needed this yet because
Speaker 1: they're just wasn't a market there, right, So it was
Speaker 1: it was a huge development and it was phenomenal and
Speaker 1: really important in computers and electronics. But at the time
Speaker 1: everyone's like, well, that's cool, but what does it do?
Speaker 1: I don't want to yeah exactly, but we'll we'll understand
Speaker 1: there's an interesting, first, really good application for it coming up.
Speaker 1: So that he was not the only person to be
Speaker 1: to work on the integrated circuit and come up with us.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a separate group that came up with it
Speaker 1: independently right led by Jack Kilby over at Texas Instruments
Speaker 1: and UM. And the story of that one goes that
Speaker 1: the Jack was had only been with Texas Instruments for
Speaker 1: a couple of months and was left alone therefore at
Speaker 1: the offices during a vacation time when everyone else had
Speaker 1: off and just sitting around came up with this with
Speaker 1: a very similar idea for how to um how to
Speaker 1: add layers to a wafer before before starting to catch
Speaker 1: out the chemical process. And I think the chemical process
Speaker 1: is what Noise really came up with. UM but uh,
Speaker 1: but but but but yeah, anyway, you know they would
Speaker 1: they both applied for patents both companies, and a fair
Speaker 1: Child would wind up winning that one really hard, partially
Speaker 1: because because Noise had sort of expanded upon the same
Speaker 1: concept and uh and filed a much more detailed patent. Right. So,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to our episodes on Texas Instruments, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard our story there where we talked about the
Speaker 1: integrated circuit. It's interesting and not unusual to see two
Speaker 1: different people in two different companies, not necessarily having any
Speaker 1: connection with one another, independently come up with the same thing.
Speaker 1: We've seen this happen again and again, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: just kind of indicates that the time was right, like
Speaker 1: enough of the groundwork had been laid that someone was
Speaker 1: going to come up with it. And when you've got
Speaker 1: that many brilliant people working on it, surely it shouldn't
Speaker 1: come as a surprise that more than one person realized
Speaker 1: how it was going to work. In this case, we
Speaker 1: give the credit largely to two Noise. At least he
Speaker 1: got the patent for it UM. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Gene Herny created the first planar transistor. Now it's gonna
Speaker 1: it's kind of complicated to talk about what exactly the
Speaker 1: planar transistor is, but in general, the earlier transistors had
Speaker 1: exposed junctions which made them less efficient when they were
Speaker 1: processing electricity, when they were doing whatever it was they
Speaker 1: were supposed to be doing. In that particular transistor, uh,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of leakage, which meant that not
Speaker 1: all the electrons were going where you wanted them to go,
Speaker 1: and you had a lot of wasted power. In that case,
Speaker 1: the planar approach meant that. And planars p l A
Speaker 1: in a R, which was at least for a long
Speaker 1: time I'm not sure if it still is. Was a
Speaker 1: proprietary word owned by Fairchild. Interesting that that they've made
Speaker 1: a good couple million bucks on licensing for Wow. I
Speaker 1: did not know that. I didn't see that in my research. Well,
Speaker 1: at any rate, they according to what I read the
Speaker 1: reason The main reason they called it that was because
Speaker 1: it ended up having these uh there were these protective
Speaker 1: layers that were on top of these transistors, and the
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom at the time was that you need to
Speaker 1: remove those at the end of processing in order for
Speaker 1: this transistor to work. There are a lot of engineers
Speaker 1: who were of the opinion that if you were to
Speaker 1: leave those layers in place, it wouldn't either the transistor
Speaker 1: wouldn't work properly, it would be less efficient, or it
Speaker 1: just would It just was a wasteful idea. That was
Speaker 1: something that Hernie said, No, that's let's try this and
Speaker 1: created a transistor using this approach where those layers were
Speaker 1: left in place, and it actually created a much more
Speaker 1: efficient transistor. And uh So, the reason I've seen of
Speaker 1: why it was called planars because the transistor itself was
Speaker 1: flat because those layers had not been removed. There are other,
Speaker 1: uh exact descriptions that say that the reason why it's
Speaker 1: called as because all the elements are within the same
Speaker 1: plane of each other. Your wage may vary, you know.
Speaker 1: The wacky thing about history is that different people define
Speaker 1: it in different ways, and we just have to go
Speaker 1: with whatever one we like. Most. So then we that
Speaker 1: takes us up to nineteen six one, and that's when
Speaker 1: fair Child Semi Conductor got that patent on the monolithic
Speaker 1: integrated circuit. When I hear monolithic integrade circuit, I just
Speaker 1: imagine it must have been enormous. That's a model like
Speaker 1: the thing. Yes, exactly, that's the second biggest integrated circuit
Speaker 1: have ever seen. Anyway, the first integrated circuit that was
Speaker 1: commercially available from fair Child was the Resistor Transistor Logic
Speaker 1: product also known as RTL. So, uh, you're gonna hear
Speaker 1: us talk about a lot of these terms. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna go into a lot of detail because every single
Speaker 1: one of these gets really really technical. But in any rate,
Speaker 1: this is what was what leading to true managerization, allowing
Speaker 1: these computers and like tries to come in those smaller
Speaker 1: form factors. Now, those first integrated circuits were hundred twenty
Speaker 1: dollars per chip. It's pretty expensive. And again and there
Speaker 1: weren't that many customers out there that had need for
Speaker 1: it except for one big one. So nineteen what industry
Speaker 1: really had to conserve on how much space there stuff
Speaker 1: took up? Could that be the space industry could be
Speaker 1: you know, it's so ironic that there's nothing out there
Speaker 1: but space, and yet they needed to conserve space. Can
Speaker 1: you guys hear me shaking my hat at him? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the obviously when you're designing a space craft, some sort
Speaker 1: of space capsule, every single tiny Yeah, you gotta have
Speaker 1: enough room for if it's a manned spacecraft, you have
Speaker 1: to have enough room for the astronauts to move around
Speaker 1: and do whatever it is they need to do. And
Speaker 1: so conserving that was of the highest level of importance.
Speaker 1: So the space industry, NASA really relied heavily on fair
Speaker 1: Child Semiconductor in those early days. In fact, some of
Speaker 1: the some of the component it's that fair Child would
Speaker 1: make would be used in the Apollo program for the
Speaker 1: guidance systems. Very important stuff. Uh. In nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: fair Child opened up a production facility in Maine, south Portland,
Speaker 1: specifically yep, south Portland that would become important. That's uh
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. This will come in and play in the
Speaker 1: second part of our series. That's where the headquarters are now,
Speaker 1: South Portland, Maine. That that facility was open in sixty
Speaker 1: two and the transistors produced there were intended mostly for radios,
Speaker 1: and oscilloscopes and a few other uh instruments, you know,
Speaker 1: electronic instruments. In sixty three they produced the resistor transistor
Speaker 1: logic dual gate device, the RTL dual gate device, the
Speaker 1: first to incorporate buried layer isolation technology, which are the
Speaker 1: Planer resistors. This was the first time they had actually
Speaker 1: incorporated that approach that Noise had had really and Hernie
Speaker 1: had pioneered. And now this was actually control product. So
Speaker 1: they were you know, you can think of those earlier
Speaker 1: to discoveries. They obviously took a couple of years to
Speaker 1: get worked into the manufacturing process, and those those one
Speaker 1: up with with Apollo, didn't they Yeah, yeah, they sure did.
Speaker 1: So these are the ones that the Apollo program would
Speaker 1: rely on heavily for multiple systems, mainly guidance. In sixty
Speaker 1: four they created the n P N Planer power transistor,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of like you can imagine it
Speaker 1: like a sandwich, all right, So the the top piece
Speaker 1: of bread on your sin which is really negative, it's
Speaker 1: just a negative piece of bread. This is the N
Speaker 1: type silicon. Then you would have the delicious center of
Speaker 1: your sandwich, which in my case would probably be peanut
Speaker 1: butter and jelly because I'm you know, a man of sophistication.
Speaker 1: That would be p types. That's very positive positive silicon.
Speaker 1: Then the bottom layer bread once again from that same
Speaker 1: negative loaf that you received earlier. It's the other end
Speaker 1: type and it used thin film resistors. This is important
Speaker 1: because previous versions of integrated circuits actually used little tiny
Speaker 1: metal connectors to connect the various layers right right, those
Speaker 1: were the film of This was than enough that it
Speaker 1: would let the electrons just pass through it directly rather
Speaker 1: than needing those they have those connectors exactly. It made
Speaker 1: it simpler to to produce these types of transistors. And
Speaker 1: again according to Moore's law, we would find these developments
Speaker 1: making it more efficient cheaper to produce. That's what it
Speaker 1: allowed us to create more complex electronics using these components,
Speaker 1: and to make the components themselves more complex. So sixty
Speaker 1: five that's when Fairchild produces the operational amplifier or pp amp.
Speaker 1: So that's essentially what it sounds like. An amplifier amplify something.
Speaker 1: It makes something bigger in this case is voltage. So
Speaker 1: what it would do is take the incoming voltage and
Speaker 1: amplify the potential difference from the input terminals significantly, remembering
Speaker 1: the voltage is a measurement of the difference in electric potential.
Speaker 1: Was also the year in which More actually published that
Speaker 1: that article um eloquently titled Cramming more components onto integrated circuits,
Speaker 1: in which Moore's observation or law was laid out. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: and boy, Moore's law. That's one of those things that
Speaker 1: even today you have people saying any day now is
Speaker 1: going to be the last day for Moore's law, and
Speaker 1: the engineers say, I will take you up on that challenge,
Speaker 1: and so yes, six six, let's let's move on. Let's
Speaker 1: keep going, because you know fair Child kept going, so
Speaker 1: we will to sixty six. They created the first standard
Speaker 1: transistor transistor logic or t t L product, which was
Speaker 1: a quad to put uh two input negated and gait
Speaker 1: or nand in A and D. So that's a logic
Speaker 1: gate that creates a false output only if all inputs
Speaker 1: are true. So in binary terms, if you put if
Speaker 1: you put in two one's you get a zero. Any
Speaker 1: other input combination results in a one. So if you
Speaker 1: get to zeros, it comes out of one one one
Speaker 1: and one zero comes out of one one zero one
Speaker 1: one comes out as one. I know this gets confusing,
Speaker 1: but you have to you do essentially think like with
Speaker 1: two switches, you have four potential combinations, even though you
Speaker 1: would mostly think, well, one's offen, one's on. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's important to designate that off on and on off
Speaker 1: are different in the sense of binary. Me getting on
Speaker 1: my binary soapbox which only has two sides. It's not
Speaker 1: really a box, I guess. Alright. So nineteen seven, fair
Speaker 1: Child introduces the new op amp with temperature compensation and
Speaker 1: metal oxide silicon capacitor or MOSS m o S metal
Speaker 1: oxide silicon. We're gonna into a lot of initialisms and
Speaker 1: some acronyms than thank you, thank you, Twitter listener, um
Speaker 1: name I don't have right now in front of us,
Speaker 1: who corrected? Ut, Yeah, I do that all the being snarky,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I actually really appreciate it. No, I really
Speaker 1: do too. I am that guy. I'm the who makes
Speaker 1: those corrections, So I cannot I cannot criticize others for
Speaker 1: doing the same to me, because I do that to
Speaker 1: other people. But yes. In sixty eight, Gordon Moore and
Speaker 1: Robert Noyce left the company. They leave fair Child. Now
Speaker 1: see the fair Child Camera and Instruments. They were kind
Speaker 1: of what well, fair Child semi Conductor was part of
Speaker 1: this company. The people over at fair Child Camera and
Speaker 1: Instruments were sometimes a little hands when it came to, uh,
Speaker 1: the management style. Like they would they would sit there
Speaker 1: and override certain things that the engineers thought were really important.
Speaker 1: And so they, the founders sometimes referred to as fair Children,
Speaker 1: became less enchanted with the company they had helped create,
Speaker 1: and one by one or sometimes sometimes more than one
Speaker 1: by one, they left to go and either work for
Speaker 1: someone else or to found their own companies. Right in
Speaker 1: this case, more and noise left to found something called Intel. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little company get called Intel. Yeah, so they which
Speaker 1: is you know, you sit there and you think about
Speaker 1: this is a pretty interesting progression. First they worked for Shockley,
Speaker 1: the one of the inventors of the transistor. Then they
Speaker 1: went on to found fair Child Semiconductor, and now they
Speaker 1: they're leaving again to found Intel. We'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the other companies that were founded by fair Children
Speaker 1: as well. That will come into play and later on. Uh. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: fair Child Semiconductor hired away a guy named c. Lester Hogan,
Speaker 1: who was formerly of Motorola's semiconductor business, to become the
Speaker 1: head of fair Child Semiconductor. And Hogan did something that
Speaker 1: made him extremely unpopular at Motorola and very popular, uh
Speaker 1: at fair Child Camera, but not not so not necessarily
Speaker 1: so much at fair Child Semiconductor. He decided to cannibalize
Speaker 1: his old division at Motorola, and he brought on lots
Speaker 1: and lots of managers some would say around a hundred
Speaker 1: managers from Motorola, but he also along seven executives to
Speaker 1: become the new management of fair Child semi Conductor. They
Speaker 1: essentially wiped out the existing management of fair Child and
Speaker 1: replaced them. Right now, those um, those seven executives from
Speaker 1: Motorola had a their own nickname. You had the traitors
Speaker 1: eight who made up the original fair Child Semiconductor group.
Speaker 1: The seven executives were called Hogan's heroes. Hogan's heroes, that's right.
Speaker 1: I did read about that, and they went on to
Speaker 1: star in a great television series. I don't think that's true. No,
Speaker 1: but Motorola did sue fair Child for damages due to
Speaker 1: all of this. UM. I think the final outcome of
Speaker 1: that case was that the court said, like, well, it
Speaker 1: didn't help them that much if if they had any wrongdoing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is that was like the biggest backhanded win of
Speaker 1: all time, right, or it's very similar to something that
Speaker 1: happened in the Apple Samsung patent disputes. A judge ended
Speaker 1: up looking at this case that Motorola brought again fair Child,
Speaker 1: saying that fair Child had had essentially uh completely butchered
Speaker 1: Motorola semiconductor business. They kind of doomed it by taking
Speaker 1: all the talent. And furthermore, I had had like stolen
Speaker 1: some trade secrets by by lieu of of exactly human people.
Speaker 1: The people who were developing the products of Motorola had
Speaker 1: in their heads the information that was important to Motorola success,
Speaker 1: and these were trade secrets, and therefore fair Child had
Speaker 1: stolen trade secrets in this process. And initially there was
Speaker 1: a ten percent drop in stock price at Motorola and
Speaker 1: a nineteen percent increase at fair Child. But this lawsuit
Speaker 1: took years to play out, right, And by the end
Speaker 1: of it, the judge said, you know, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: fair Child's numbers and this has not done them any
Speaker 1: good at all. So I can't see how you can
Speaker 1: say that this is uh, this the fair Child was
Speaker 1: doing the story to good advantage, because if they that's
Speaker 1: what their intent was, it sure hasn't played out that way.
Speaker 1: Fair Child was like, yeah, this is a that was
Speaker 1: a huge slap in the face for both companies at
Speaker 1: the same time Justice nineteen sixty nine, fair Child builds
Speaker 1: a semi conductor plant on Navajo Reservation Territory in Shipwrock
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, which will become important later. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a tough story. So nineteen seventy three, fair Child tries
Speaker 1: out a new technique creating integrated circuit transistors. It's called
Speaker 1: isoplane AR two, and that actually lets them reduce the
Speaker 1: size of transistors by about seventy percent while keeping the
Speaker 1: power consumption at the same more or less the same level.
Speaker 1: That's also the year when we actually got that judgment
Speaker 1: against Motorola Um. Nineteen seventy four was when Hogan was
Speaker 1: dismissed as president of fair Child. He remained the vice
Speaker 1: chairman at the time, and the company starts to have
Speaker 1: rounds of layoffs. They this was a point where they
Speaker 1: started talking about fair Child Semiconductor having a real problem
Speaker 1: with management and mismanagement. Of the company, and some of
Speaker 1: that was due to the executive some of it was
Speaker 1: due to the board of directors or or fair Child
Speaker 1: camera to be perfectly blunt. So Hogan, who had been
Speaker 1: this this sort of golden Child and you know, the
Speaker 1: center of this huge debate for several years, is now
Speaker 1: on the Olts. He's no longer president. Was when a
Speaker 1: really controversial thing happened back at that that plant that
Speaker 1: was on Navajo Reservation territory. Um, there was a there
Speaker 1: was an armed protest there. Yeah, twenty Navajo protesters, armed
Speaker 1: Navajo protesters from the American Indian Movement took the plant
Speaker 1: by force, demanding better working conditions. And they also had
Speaker 1: demands that didn't have anything to do with fair Child Semiconductor.
Speaker 1: It was more like about the plant. It was just
Speaker 1: a general plea to to really the United States, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was to bring attention to, uh, the state of
Speaker 1: affairs that Native Americans were living under in reservations across
Speaker 1: the United States. It's saying, we want attention brought, we
Speaker 1: want better living conditions. So really they were using the
Speaker 1: plant as saw their platform to get this attention. They
Speaker 1: held it for eight days under armed force and eventually
Speaker 1: gave themselves up peacefully. Uh. Fair Child's response once this
Speaker 1: was over was to shut down that plant entirely and
Speaker 1: they just left. It's now an abandoned building, or at
Speaker 1: least it was the last I saw from the last
Speaker 1: report I read, which I think was written in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight or two thousand nine, so it could be
Speaker 1: something different now. But the story is pretty grim because
Speaker 1: while I think everyone at fair Child had maybe not
Speaker 1: the most honorable of intentions, but you know, they wanted
Speaker 1: to They wanted to build this this facility here, partially
Speaker 1: because they could get really cheap labor, but it would
Speaker 1: mean that they could help this community. They it seemed
Speaker 1: to me like they had that interest at heart, that
Speaker 1: they really did want to to take it not just
Speaker 1: take advantage of people, but to help a community. Sure,
Speaker 1: although it was a very important protest to go on,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I mean, this this was You could
Speaker 1: argue about whether or not it was done in the
Speaker 1: best way, but it was certainly this was an error
Speaker 1: part of that human rights movement that was that was
Speaker 1: transitioning from the nineteen sixties on. It was it was
Speaker 1: critical for all of that. Although right, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can argue about whether or not it
Speaker 1: was the right way to go, but yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a certain point when people are desperate. Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: there was a point where they were feeling like there
Speaker 1: was no one listening and this was a way to
Speaker 1: make the world listen. So that kind of wraps up
Speaker 1: our first episode. This this this pivotal moment when fair
Speaker 1: Child has this this very public, very violent or potentially
Speaker 1: violent moment, and they're they're really in the moment. The
Speaker 1: company itself is in in this sort of chaotic transition
Speaker 1: where they they've undergone changes in in their executive leadership.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more or about what happened in the years
Speaker 1: since nine in our next episode. Guys, if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's
Speaker 1: a company, it's a specific kind of technology, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a trend in technology, let us know. Send us
Speaker 1: an email our addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. You'll
Speaker 1: find our handle is tech Stuff hs W and Lauren
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon for
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