7 Robert Noyce 7Calif., to produce high-speed transistors. Noyce jumped at
the opportunity, renting a house in Palo Alto even before
his official job interview.
By early 1957, however, engineers at the new company
had rebelled and attempted to force Shockley out of his
management position, arguing that his poor management
delayed production and adversely affected morale. Noyce
and seven colleagues, among them Gordon Moore, resigned
after failing to remove Shockley. With Noyce as their leader,
the group—labeled the “traitorous eight” by Shockley—
successfully negotiated with the Fairchild Camera and
Instrument Company to form a new company, Fairchild
Semiconductor Corporation, located in Santa Clara.
Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation
and the Integrated Circuit
In 1958 Jean Hoerni, another Fairchild Semiconductor
founder, engineered a process to place a layer of silicon
oxide on top of transistors, sealing out dirt, dust, and other
contaminants. For Noyce, Hoerni’s process made a fun-
damental innovation possible. At that time, Fairchild
produced transistors and other elements on large silicon
wafers, cut the components out of the wafer, and later
connected individual components with wires. However,
as the number of connections increased, it became pro-
gressively more difficult to solder in ever smaller spaces.
Noyce realized that cutting the wafer apart was unnecessary;
instead, he could manufacture an entire circuit—complete
with transistors, resistors, and other elements—on a single
silicon wafer, the integrated circuit (IC). In this sense,
Noyce and coinventor Jack Kilby, who was working at
Texas Instruments, Inc., thought along similar lines. They
both saw the importance of the wafer, and each of their
companies received patents on various aspects of IC