WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The Intel Story Part One 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.319 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.720 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:18.599 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.560 Tech are you. So it's President's Day here in the 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.799 United States, and as such, it is a holiday in 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:29.120 our office, so our office is not open. But I 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:31.920 didn't want to leave you without an episode on a Monday, 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.199 and so we're actually dipping into our classics, which we 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:39.000 don't do as frequently these days. This is actually a 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.160 part one of a multi part podcast, but I thought 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:44.920 it's still really fascinating. It's telling the story of a 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.159 very important company and its origins. It is the Intel Story, 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:55.240 Part one. I hope you enjoy. Today we're going to 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.360 do another one of my wonderful episodes about the history 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:02.800 of a big company in technology. And I use the 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.080 word wonderful somewhat tongue in cheek, because it's weird to 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:09.640 toot one's own horn. But I genuinely enjoy researching these 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.399 episodes because I always learned something that I didn't know 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:17.839 before about companies that I'm really familiar with from a 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.440 product standpoint, but maybe not so much behind the scenes. 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:27.440 That's certainly the case with today's topic. Intel. Now, Intel 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.960 is a major player in the computer's industry, obviously in 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:37.280 the semiconductor and microprocessor industries, big big deal. But I 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.320 wanted to take this opportunity to kind of talk about 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:43.240 the history of the company, how it developed over time, 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.240 and sort of the contributions it has made to the 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:52.800 industry of electronics and computers. Right, So, chances are at 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.400 some point or another in your life, you've used a 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.160 device that had a little sticker on it that said 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.280 that there was Intel in side. The company is famous 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.400 for producing the chips that make our computers and electronics 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:09.240 so powerful. So they're famous for making the stuff that 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:13.440 makes our other stuff work. But what is the actual 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:17.080 story behind the company. Well, to understand that, we're gonna 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:20.280 have to do something that I'm infamous for doing, which 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:22.800 is that we're going to have to go roll the 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:27.000 clock back well before there ever was an Intel. Because 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.840 I really do think that to have a true understanding 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.840 of any subject, not just a company, but really anything, 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.840 you need to go back quite a bit and get 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:42.000 the foundation set before you start just spouting off facts. 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:44.600 I could tell you that Intel was founded in the 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:47.960 late nineteen sixties and pick up from there. But without 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.760 understanding the pathway that led there, you don't have as 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.600 full an appreciation. At least in my opinion, that's the case. 0:02:55.680 --> 0:03:00.720 Certainly personally for me, that's the case. So we're going 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.800 to look at a couple of companies that preceded Intel 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.040 to understand why there's an Intel in the first place, 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:11.000 and we'll talk about the Traitorous Eight. There's treachery involved 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.240 in this story, and we'll also talk about Moore's Law. 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.040 That's going to play a big part in this discussion 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:19.880 as well, because all of this is wrapped up in 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.320 the birth of Intel, and it's a story of not 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:26.880 just technology, but of people. And as we all know, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:32.560 people are complicated critters. We're capable of great and terrible things, 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.200 and sometimes things that are both great and terrible at 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:38.400 the same time. So today we're going to look at 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:43.880 some stories about people who made amazing contributions to us 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:49.800 in the form of engineering, advancing science, understanding the physics 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.760 of electronics at a deeper level that allowed us to 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:56.920 create incredible gadgets. But we'll also learn some not so 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:01.160 nice stuff, some things about people that were or at 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:05.440 least disturbing, if not worse. But much of our story 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:11.080 is going to revolve around semiconductors, so as a refresher, 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.360 a semiconductor is a class of material that has a 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.760 much lower resistance to the flow of electrical current in 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.720 one direction than it does in the other direction. If 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.320 you listen to my episodes about the history of electricity, 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:30.000 you remember about the concept of resistance, right, that's the 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:34.960 tendency of any given material to resist the flow of electrons. So, 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:37.920 if you have something that's a really good conductor, it 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.080 tends to have a very low resistance. It allows electrons 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:45.120 to move through fairly freely. But something with a very 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:49.120 high resistance, like a very very high resistance that's an insulator, 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.240 it doesn't allow electrons to pass through nearly as easily. 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.480 If you're able to take a conductor and you're able 0:04:56.520 --> 0:05:00.520 to lower the temperature near to absolute zero, it ends 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.159 up becoming a superconductor, meaning that there's no resistance at all, 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.760 and it allows electrons to pass through without any resistance. 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:14.080 So resistance is this tendency to again resist the flow 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:18.080 of electrons. It turns out that in some materials this 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:23.240 is a variable where under one set of circumstances, electrons 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.120 will flow through very easily, and under a different set 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:30.839 of circumstances using that same material, electrons will not flow 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:35.320 through nearly as easily. These are what we call semiconductors, 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:40.640 because sometimes they conduct and sometimes they do not. It 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:42.560 can be useful to think of this as sort of 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.560 like an inclined plane or a slide. If you have 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.920 a marble and you let it roll down a slide, 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.040 it does so easily with very little effort, right. You 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:55.000 just have to move it so it hits that inclined 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:57.440 plane and gravity does the rest of the work. To 0:05:57.440 --> 0:05:59.800 move the marble back up the slide, you have to 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.000 put forth some effort. You have to push the marble 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:07.120 up the slide, working against gravity to do so. Semiconductors 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.640 are kind of similar, except we're talking about electrons, not 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:15.680 large macro objects like marbles. And it's not a perfect analogy, 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.120 but it allows you to kind of understand what's going 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:22.880 on now. A semiconductor's tendency to allow or prevent electricity 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.000 from flowing through it can be altered in a few 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:29.320 different ways depending upon the material. So, for example, some 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:33.599 semiconductor material will change its resistance if you introduce some 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:38.520 impurities into it. This is called doping, where you strategically 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:43.640 add in some of these impurities to change it from 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.560 being say pure silicon, to doped silicon, and this would 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:52.520 allow for the transfer of electrons in one direction more easily. 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.640 Or you might be able to change the resistance of 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.320 a semiconductor by applying a magnetic field to it, or 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.159 there are other ways of changing Like I mentioned with superconductors, 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.159 that's temperature. So there are a lot of different factors 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:10.240 that can change the way a conductor conducts electricity, whether 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.240 it's with little resistance or with a great deal of resistance. 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:19.640 The first recorded use of the word semiconducting that I 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.840 know of came from Alessandro Volta. And again if you 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.240 listen to those history of Electricity episodes, then you know 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.800 that Volta was an eighteenth century philosopher and inventor who 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:34.840 created an early battery called the voltaic pile. But as 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:38.600 brilliant as Volta was, he did not actually lay down 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:41.480 any theories about what semi conductors are or what was 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.480 going on, largely because he did not have a full 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:49.680 understanding of what electricity was. Remember, for centuries people thought 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.160 electricity was some form of fluid. They didn't have a 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:57.480 full understanding of what it actually was. In the nineteenth century, 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.360 you had Michael Faraday. He was another scientist, and he 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:05.640 noticed that silver sulfide's electrical resistance would change at different temperatures. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:10.680 So he made this observation. If he changed the temperature 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:15.800 of silver sulfide, the resistance would also change. Johann Hittorff, 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:19.480 who was another scientist, published a study about temperature dependence 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:24.040 of the electrical conductivity of certain materials, adding to more 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:30.200 knowledge about the nature of semiconductors. Several scientists formulated theories 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:33.000 about semiconductors and the factors that would cause them to 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.000 change their resistance to electrical flow, but it wouldn't be 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.160 until the mid twentieth century that someone figured out how 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:42.959 they could be used to solve what was becoming a 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:48.080 very tricky problem. Now, initially this problem was all about 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:53.559 signal amplification. Now, signals are very important in all sorts 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:58.240 of different electronic applications, and often the signal that you 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:02.160 generate maybe very weak and you need to amplify it. 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.120 You need to increase the amplitude of the signal in 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.959 order for you to do something useful with it that. 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:12.200 It was certainly the case with telephone communication. In the 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:16.840 early twentieth century. A little company called AT and T 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.400 was struggling with this because they were laying out a 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:25.800 coast to coast network of telephone lines. They were allowing 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.720 for transcontinental phone calls, but they needed to be able 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.439 to boost the signal that went along the telephone lines 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.600 so that the thing you heard on one end would 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.000 be intelligible, so that if I'm talking in Atlanta and 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.480 I want someone in San Francisco to hear me, the 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:47.240 signal remains strong throughout the entire journey from Atlanta to 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.120 San Francisco. So they needed to figure out a way 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:56.760 to amplify signals, and initially they were looking at using 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.640 vacuum tubes. Now AT and T was really interesting in 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.880 innovating in this space, largely because the company was starting 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:09.000 to worry about its patents, and it purchased several patents 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.600 from Alexander Graham Bell, who we attribute the creation of 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:17.600 the telephone to, and those patents were what allowed AT 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:23.000 and T to maintain a strategic advantage over other potential competitors. 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:30.280 But patents they expire after a while. So once they expire, 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.600 that information is then available for anyone to use without 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:37.200 having to pay a license. So the patent allows you 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.320 to see how people are doing things, but it prevents 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:44.160 you from following that same example unless you license the 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:48.200 information from the patent holder. Well, once a patent expires, 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.000 it's free game. So AT and T was looking at 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:54.120 these patents expiring and they said, well, we really need 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.440 to innovate in other spaces to maintain our competitive advantage. 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.199 And you've heard me probably talk about Aten He I 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.439 did some episodes about the company not that long ago, 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:09.000 and they were very good at maintaining their advantage for 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.600 a really long time, even after they got broken up 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:17.679 by the United States government. Well, the company was so 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.319 concerned about this they even brought Thomas Vale out of retirement, 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:24.240 that was their former president of the company, and they 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.040 wanted to really tackle this problem. And again, initially they 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:32.160 started to use vacuum tubes as signal amplifiers. These were 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.439 devices that were invented by a guy named Lee de Forest. 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:37.600 And one day I will have to do a full 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.520 episode about vacuum tube technology and exactly how it works. 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:46.160 But it's a little outside the scope of this episode. Now, 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.240 one thing you should know is vacuum tubes were not 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.240 a perfect technology. They had a lot of drawbacks. They 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:54.920 were delicate, they could burn out, so you'd have to 0:11:54.960 --> 0:12:00.280 replace them fairly regularly. They were also very long, large 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.200 and bulky, so you could not have a small form 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.680 factor for whatever device you were using that had vacuum 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.240 tube amplifiers in it. And they generated a lot of heat, 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.000 which in some applications is problematic. Now, there are some 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.600 things where people still love to use vacuum tubes as 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:23.280 their signal amplifier. People who use amplifiers for musical instruments love, 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:30.240 generally speaking, amplifiers that use vacuum tubes. Those are valued 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.240 very highly in the musical field. But for something like 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:37.880 long distance telephone calls, it was seen as sort of 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.800 a band aid to the problem. And so the company 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.080 AT and T was really interested in figuring out an 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.120 alternative to these, and they tasked their research and development 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.640 ARM to try and come up with something. That ARM 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.600 was known as Bell Labs. They wanted to find an 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.400 alternative to vacuum tubes, something that could boost a signal 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.160 similar to the tubes, but take up a fraction of 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:04.600 size and put out very little heat comparatively speaking. The 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:08.320 team leader for this project at Bell Labs was a 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:13.000 guy named William Bill Shockley. Now, in a way, Shockley 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.080 would become partly responsible for the foundation of Intel, but 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.760 it wasn't because he was a founder of Intel. He wasn't. 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:23.360 He was not among the co founders of Intel. However, 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.439 you could argue that he was at least partly responsible 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:31.480 for Intel ever existing. Shockley was born in London, England, 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:35.079 but both his parents were American. His father was a 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:38.520 mining engineer who had contract work in the UK and 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.200 so had moved his family to the United Kingdom. His 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:44.080 mother was one of the first women to graduate Stanford, 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:48.000 and she held degrees in mathematics and art. Now, apparently 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:53.360 the Shackley family was a group of curmudgeonly folks. They 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:58.959 were a little grouchy. From all accounts, they might have 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:04.040 had arrested As a family feature. His parents never seemed 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:05.920 to be able to stay in one place for more 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:07.960 than a year, so they moved around a lot, and 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.000 Shockley himself would develop many of the same characteristics as 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.320 his parents, being a little difficult to be around, which 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.640 is probably a generous way of putting it now. Eventually, 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:22.000 Shockley attended the California Institute of Technology or cal TECH, 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:25.360 back in nineteen twenty eight, and he majored in physics. 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:30.240 He was apparently really quite the prankster over at cal Tech. 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.640 Supposedly his pranks were the stuff of legend. I did not, however, 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:38.200 look into those for this episode, maybe in a future one. 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:41.920 He pursued a doctorate at MIT in nineteen thirty three, 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:44.960 and then he became an apprentice to a man named 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.320 Philip Morse, and as a result he got a job 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:52.280 at Bell Labs. He gained a reputation as a brilliant 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:55.760 and innovative problem solver. Now this is a bit of 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:59.360 a tangent, but it's an example of his sense of innovation. 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.800 He was one of the people who made an early 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.560 design for a nuclear reactor. He actually partnered with a 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:10.840 guy named James Fisk to work on this. They were 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.720 trying to suss out how you could make a sustained 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.520 nuclear reaction, and Shockley's idea was that you could use 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:21.720 uranium in little chunks, and you could separate the chunks 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:24.560 of uranium from each other using some other material, and 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.400 the purpose of that material would be to slow down 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:31.560 but not capture neutrons as they're given off by the uranium, 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:35.240 and by doing that, allowing the neutrons to hit other 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.480 atoms of U two thirty five and thus generate more 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:44.080 neutrons as the U two thirty five would decay, and 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:50.160 these neutrons would then move out to again impact other 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:54.080 U two thirty five atoms and sustain the reaction, so 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.840 that you would just continuously have this release of radioactive energy. Now, 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.120 their work would end up being classified by the US government, 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:05.960 as this was during World War II and considered highly 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:10.720 dangerous material. It turned out that the scientists who were 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:14.200 working on the Manhattan Project were concentrating on essentially the 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:18.680 same thing that Fisk and Shockley were thinking about, except, 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.320 of course, Shocklei and Fisk were mostly interested in a 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:24.400 nuclear reactor, whereas the Manhattan Project was all about a 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.040 more uncontrolled nuclear reaction to create a bomb. But they 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.920 were all working on similar things. They didn't have any 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:33.320 knowledge of each other because the US government was very 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.800 much concerned with keeping this stuff secret and safe from 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:40.880 potential enemies, so they didn't know anything about each other's 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.600 projects until after World War two had ended. I interrupt 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.640 this classic episode about the Intel story in order for 0:16:47.720 --> 0:17:00.240 us to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Now, 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:03.200 before the war, Shockley had actually worked with a guy 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:07.800 named Walter Brittain who together they were trying to create 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:12.520 this alternative to vacuum tube technology, a solid state alternative 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.440 to vacuum tube amplifiers. But while they were working on it, 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.080 it didn't go anywhere. They couldn't create something that was 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:23.719 actually working. Then the war happened and their attentions were elsewhere. 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.280 But after the war, Shockley decided to try this again. 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.760 They brought on another theorist over to Bell Labs named 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:36.360 John Bardeen. Now Bardeen and Britain were starting to work 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.080 together closely to try and create this alternative vacuum tubes, 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:45.679 and Shockley was the administrative leader for their team, but 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.360 he was mostly working on his own on his own 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.040 little processes and inventions, So he would occasionally stop in 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:56.600 see what the two were working on, give some guidance 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.919 or maybe some suggestions, and then he would head off 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.399 often work on his own some more so, he was 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:08.159 not actually part of the team that, on December sixteenth, 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:13.160 nineteen forty seven, unveiled the first working transistor, a solid 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:17.000 state alternative to vacuum tube technology instead. That was Britain 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:21.119 and Bardeen who created that first point contact resist transistor, 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.400 and that would become the foundation for the electronics industry. 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.560 The transistor that is not the point contact version, just 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:34.160 the transistor in general. And I've done episodes about transistor, 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:35.879 so I'm not going to talk about it too much. 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.800 But the reason our electronics are so small is because 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.000 engineers developed the transistor. Otherwise we would still be dependent 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.600 upon vacuum tubes and that would really limit the types 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.879 of technology we could have at our disposal because they 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:53.800 would be so bulky and hot. So it really did 0:18:54.000 --> 0:19:00.000 open up an enormous world of opportunity for really everyone 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.840 and ultimately, but especially at and t early on now 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:09.520 Shockley reportedly had a complicated reaction to the development of 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:13.000 this first transistor. On one hand, he was really proud 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:15.800 of his team. He was leading a team that had 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.600 made a major scientific and engineering breakthrough with the invention 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.960 of the transistor. But on the other end, he was 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:29.119 a little disappointed and frustrated that he was not directly 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.880 part of this team. And he also had his pride 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.119 hurt quite a bit because he had attempted to do 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.040 the same thing before World War Two but could never 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.520 get it to work. But these other two guys they 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.119 got it to work. So I have a feeling that 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.200 he felt a little upset that he did not come 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:49.640 up with the solution to this problem. Rather these other 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:53.640 two guys did. He didn't let that completely derail him. However, 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:57.640 while he was in a hotel room in Chicago where 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:01.800 he was attending the American Physical Society convention, he came 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.160 up with an alternative to the point contact transistor called 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:09.879 the sandwich transistor, which was easier to manufacture than the 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:14.600 point contact type, so it ended up immediately being a 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:18.600 replacement for this initial design of transistors. It did the 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.560 same thing in a different form factor. So while he 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.480 was a little might have been a little bitter about 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.680 not being in on the team when they made this breakthrough, 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:33.200 he then immediately almost made an improvement to that design 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.960 to make it more practical. At and T made a decision. 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:40.360 It was kind of a political decision on the back end, 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.320 because you had Britain and Bardeen, who were the two 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:47.760 guys who actually invented the transistor, but then you had Shockley, 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:51.560 who was the administrative lead of the team and who 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.480 had at least had some input, although not directly responsible 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.000 for the invention, and AT and T wanted to make 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:00.520 sure they didn't step on any toes, so they made 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:04.280 a decision where they say that any photo of the 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:07.359 transistor that was to include the development team would also 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:11.480 have to have Shockli in it, sort of as a 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:17.080 way of saying his contributions were important or instrumental for 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.879 the development of the transistor. Now, this also tended to 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:22.919 rub other people the wrong way, people who said he 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.679 didn't have nearly enough involvement to justify being in every 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:31.000 single photo of this transistor. So it created a little 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.960 bit of drama. And also Shockli was reportedly difficult to 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:40.399 work with at times. He had a very forceful and 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:47.840 somewhat brusque personality that people didn't always enjoy being around. 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:50.720 I'm dancing around it a lot, but it's largely because 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:55.000 I never met Shockli, so I can't tell any firsthand information. 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:58.479 I'm merely reporting what other people have said and even 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:01.439 third and fourth hand accounts of that sort of stuff. 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:04.159 So I like to be careful and not put too 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:08.280 many words in too many people's mouths. If I can. Shockley, 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.520 to his credit, always tried to make sure that any 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:15.560 stories that were about this transistor indicated that Britain and 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.119 Bardeen had been the ones to make the breakthrough. So 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.639 he wasn't trying to steal credit, he wasn't claiming it 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.159 for his own. He wanted to make sure that the 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:28.280 people responsible were credited with their work. But often Shockley 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:32.639 would be cited as the primary or sometimes sole inventor 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:36.919 of the transistor. That the narrative sort of became. He 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:40.720 had been working on it, he was derailed by World 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:43.800 War Two, came back and now it's a thing, and 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:46.720 he would point out that's an oversimplification of what had 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:50.560 happened in many different respects. And in nineteen fifty six 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:53.320 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:56.919 work on the transistor, along with Britain and Bardeen. But 0:22:57.480 --> 0:22:59.520 the fact that he also got a Nobel Prize for 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.399 this when he wasn't directly involved with the invention of 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:09.920 the first working transistor again upset some people. Shockley would 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:16.560 end up completely alienating himself from Britain and Bardeen. Neither 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:19.000 of them wanted to work with him anymore. They felt 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:23.800 that it was a difficult working relationship. Bardeen and Britain 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:26.840 would actually both refuse to work with Shockley, and in 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:31.679 nineteen fifty three Shockley himself left Bell Labs and first 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:34.719 he went back to Caltech and he worked there for 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:37.160 a while, but he was looking for something more permanent, 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:43.640 and then he encountered a financier named Arnold Beckmann, and 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:48.400 with Beckmann's help and some funding, Shockley founded a new 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:54.680 company in California called the Shackley Semiconductor Company. They picked 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:58.800 a location near Stanford in northern California. Shockley thought that 0:23:58.800 --> 0:24:03.960 that was an attractive spot, that the weather, the climate 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:07.800 there was really nice, the location was beautiful, it was 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:10.159 close to Stanford, so it would make it easy to 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:14.000 recruit students who were already at Stanford directly out of 0:24:14.040 --> 0:24:19.520 school to come work at Shacklei Semiconductor. So he thought 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:22.400 of this as a y strategy. And in fact, Shacklei 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:26.760 had a reputation for being able to recognize brilliant scientists 0:24:26.800 --> 0:24:31.440 and engineers. Maybe he couldn't manage them because of his personality, 0:24:31.440 --> 0:24:33.720 but he certainly could recognize them, and so he was 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:36.720 really good at recruiting people who would be very very 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:44.240 strong performers in the semiconductor industry. By the way, SHACKLEI 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:48.320 semi Conductor would become the second company in Silicon Valley. 0:24:49.760 --> 0:24:52.480 This is the early early days of Silicon Valley, before 0:24:52.520 --> 0:24:56.960 you had countless companies there, and shackle semi Conductor was 0:24:57.000 --> 0:25:00.320 the second such company in Silicon Valley. The first one 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:03.879 was Hewitt Packard, which was found in a Palo Alto 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:07.639 garage back in nineteen thirty nine and really set the 0:25:07.640 --> 0:25:12.080 standard for founding a company in Silicon Valley. There were 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:15.639 so many companies that were founded in garages from that 0:25:15.720 --> 0:25:18.520 point forward, some of them in Silicon Valley, some of 0:25:18.520 --> 0:25:22.480 them in other places. So Apple Computers, for example, founded 0:25:22.520 --> 0:25:27.040 in a garage in Palo Alto, California. Microsoft also founded 0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:29.920 in a garage, but that time we're talking more about Washington, 0:25:30.040 --> 0:25:36.119 not about California. Still same kind of thing. Well, you 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:38.840 got Hewitt Packard that paved the way back in nineteen 0:25:38.880 --> 0:25:42.200 thirty nine, and then Shockley Semiconductor becoming the second company 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:45.320 in Silicon Valley. This was before it had even developed 0:25:45.359 --> 0:25:50.200 that name. And Shockley, always good at recognizing strong talent, 0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:52.719 hired on some brilliant people to join his team. And 0:25:52.760 --> 0:25:57.399 two of those people were Gordon Moore and Robert Nois, 0:25:57.840 --> 0:26:01.840