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