Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore had done well for themselves
at Fairchild Semiconductor. Noyce had become general manager,
and Moore was head of Research and Development. But the company
was still under the ownership of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, and
the board there wasn't handling the semiconductor company as Noyce and
Moore would have liked -- they were diverting a lot of the profits outside
the semiconductor industry.
The two men had left Shockley Semiconductor and helped to found Fairchild;
they figured they could do it again. They resigned from Fairchild, and
in July of 1968 -- putting up $250,000 apiece and getting another $2.5
million in investments -- they started a new company named Intel, short
for Integrated Electronics.
Intel set about making memory chips,
and within three years had invented the very
first microprocessor. Today it is a multi-billion dollar company.
Resources:
-- Intel
-- Crystal Fire by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson
-- Wolfe, Tom. "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on Silicon
Valley" Esquire. December 1993, pp 346-374
Copyright
1999, ScienCentral, Inc, and The American Institute of Physics.
No
portion of this web site may be reproduced without written permission.
All Rights Reserved.
