At 4:55 PM 11/17/95, attila wrote:
2. most were pioneers: a specific example is Bob Norris who walked out of a Fairchild board meeting being being rejected for his eighth try at replacing Germanium because the first seven had failed. A couple of VCs, among them Arthur Rock and Bob Perring said: "...we believe you, let's try silicon..." and we have Intel.
Bob Noyce was already making silicon devices at Fairchild. The "planar process" was developed by him in the late 50s. It is not the case that Fairchild was stuck making germanium, nor that Intel was the first to use silicon. I could go on about the actual history, but this is far from the themes of this list, and many books cover the history very well. What Intel pioneered the development of was _silicon-gate MOS_, where the aluminum gates of traditional silicon devices is replaced with polysilicon gates. Intel did this by hiring the silicon-gate gurus from Fairchild (Vadasz, Grove, Faggin, etc.).
But, who drives Intel today? --Grove, who is labelled as the founder. Grove made the _business_ -the brains have been forgotten. Norris was the darling of the VCs for a couple years until they figured he couldn't spot a _financial_ success.
Grove remains a technologist--I studied semiconcuctor physics from his wonderful 1967 book, "The Physics and Technology of Seminconductor Devices"--and the group that leads Intel is highly technical. Gordon Moore remains connected, materials scientist Craig Barrett (who hired me into Intel in '74, ironically) is next-in-line to be President, Gerry Parker is a top technologist, and so on. As to Bob Noyce being the "darling of the VCs for a couple of years until they figured he couldn't spot a _financial_ success," I should just let that one pass. Noyce of course has been dead for several years. When he was alive, though, he "spotted" several financial successes. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."