The Man Behind the Microchip

This is a highly detailed, densely packed portrait not only of Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, but also of the science and technology he helped create. A great read.

But, says Leslie Berlin, remarkably little is known about Robert Noyce, the leader of the eight, as a person. The third son of a Midwestern preacher, Noyce had a childhood disrupted by multiple moves until he was 12, when the family settled in Grinnell, Iowa. There, Noyce and his brothers achieved a certain notoriety. They conducted chemical experiments, built electrical gadgets and, famously, built a glider in which they actually managed to fly a few feet. By the time Noyce was 14, with his brothers gone to fight in World War II, his mother decided to keep him out of mischief by enrolling him in physics classes at Grinnell College, where he got the highest grade in the class.

Noyce went on to an undergraduate degree at Grinnell, followed by a PhD from MIT, a quick marriage and a steady job at Philco working in its fledgling semiconductor research group. And then one day he got a phone call from Nobel laureate William Shockley, holder of more than 50 patents, inviting him to come to California to work for a new company.

When God calls, you go, especially since Noyce -- who had made money as a teen by selling flat-rate snow-shovelling contracts to the neighbours -- had long wanted to live in California.

Shockley had assembled a first-class team including Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame), and tried to ensure their mutual compatibility by sending them all for psychological testing. The one person he didn't test was himself; if he had, he might have been less surprised when his eight key research personnel fled. Noyce was the last of the eight to join the new project, in part because his dislike of confrontation made him demur at first.

Eventually, after much clever technology innovation, Fairchild ran into problems of its own due to its ownership, and the exodus began from there, too. Eight semiconductor start-ups were founded by Fairchild alumni; one was Noyce's and Moore's, to which Andy Grove and several other key Fairchild personnel promptly attached themselves. This was Intel, where the microprocessor was invented.

Noyce himself eventually moved on to other projects -- when he was required to document his finances during the divorce from his first wife, he turned over shoeboxes full of shares in start-ups he'd invested in.

One of the problems in documenting the history of the technology industry is that the people in it tend to assume two things. One; the future is far more interesting than the past. Two; they don't really need to write anything down because they'll remember it all if anyone's interested. For The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, Leslie Berlin managed to gain access to personal letters and family memorabilia as well as Intel archives; he also conducted many interviews with members of Noyce's family and associates.

The result is a highly detailed, densely packed portrait not only of the man, but also of the science and technology he helped create. A great read.

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