The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley
The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley
Hailed as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of Silicon Valley, Robert Noyce was a brilliant inventor, a leading entrepreneur, and a daring risk taker who piloted his own jets and skied mountains accessible only by helicopter. Now, in The Man Behind the Microchip, Leslie Berlin captures not only this colorful individual but also the vibrant interplay of technology, business, money, politics, and culture that defines Silicon Valley.
Here is the life of a high-tech industry giant. The co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, Noyce co-invented the integrated circuit, the electronic heart of every modern computer, automobile, cellular telephone, advanced weapon, and video game. With access to never-before-seen documents, Berlin pain
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Great story, great lessons, great man,
Reviewer: Mark Lamendola, Senior IEEE member, IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Member, and recipient of multiple IEEE awards.
This review is a departure from my typical “book report” style, because I have too many things to say about it for that format to work.
Isaac Asimov called the invention of integrated circuit (IC) “the most important moment since man emerged as a life form.” If you look at how ICs have changed the world, that’s a hard viewpoint to argue against.
I personally own quite a few ICs and you probably do also. They are everywhere. If you own a cell phone, a computer, or an automobile, you own at least several million transistors. Transistors inside ICs have made possible many things that were not even imagined 100 years ago. Think about all of today’s communications, conveniences, explorations, exchanges, transportation, information processing, productivity, and advances in medicine. None of this would exist, if not for Dr. Bob Noyce.
It’s hard to imagine that the drive, intelligence, and unique personality of one man could have had so much influence on bringing this about. But, it did. The IC changed the macro culture–even our brains are wired differently because of microelectronics (see http://www.mindconnection.com/books/thenewbrain.htm). It also created a micro culture we call Silicon Valley–a major engine for economic and scientific growth. The change brought about by Dr. Noyce was deep and lasting.
This book is the story of that change and of the man behind it. But if Dr. Noyce, who died in 1990, were here today, he would make it clear that every invention depends on the breakthroughs that came before it. So in The Man Behind the Microchip, you read not just about Dr. Noyce, but about the people whom he motivated and inspired.
The Man Behind the Microchip offers at least seven things to the reader:
1. A great story. I like stories where the hero faces tough odds, falls, gets back up, and prevails over one obstacle after another until he finally wins. That was the real story of Bob Noyce. He didn’t come from privilege, and he didn’t have instant success. He was human, and Berlin portrays him that way. Like all humans, he didn’t succeed at everything he tried. Sometimes, his failures were enough to stop any ordinary man. But Dr. Noyce was no ordinary man. And therein lies the story.
2. Inspiration. Have you ever watched somebody do something much more difficult than what you are faced with? Didn’t that make you feel like you could tackle your challenge and beat it? “Gosh, if he can do that, then I can do this.” Understanding the heights of Dr. Noyce’s super-extraordinary accomplishments is enough to inspire anyone to accomplish the extraordinary.
3. History. When we lose our history, we lose our knowledge of who we are. So, the history is important. It deepens both our understanding and our appreciation for the way things are.
4. Good writing. As an American who grew up in the United States, I often wonder if the people who write most of the books for today’s market read much or ever got a passing grade in an English class. Language is a social contract that facilitates the exchange of ideas. Unlike many of today’s “writers,” Leslie Berlin honors that contract. But beyond simply getting the mechanics right, Berlin knows how to turn a phrase and how to convey ideas in a clear and compelling way.
5. Insight. One of the traits we engineers are known for is we don’t just lead a horse to water. We tend to dunk its head in the water. We mean well, but the poor horse thinks we’re trying to drown it rather than slake its thirst. Not all engineers are this way, of course, and it’s not just engineers who do this. Dr. Noyce set a good example for all of us dunkers to follow. By reading how he handled things, I learned something. And it wasn’t something trivial.
6. A lesson in humility. It’s easy to look at your own accomplishments or credentials, and let your head get big. I remember judging applications for IEEE Senior Membership, in 2003. I was sitting next to Rick Bush, who is a long-time mentor of mine. I am not alone in being in in awe of Rick (there aren’t many people who get an “awe” rating from me). But even Rick was bowled over by what we were reading. We were sitting in judgment of people with multiple doctorates, dozens of patents, and work accomplishments that seemed surreal. I put my thumb and forefinger together and told Rick, “I feel this big.” He said, “Me, too.” Reading about Dr. Noyce (again) brought out that same feeling.
7. A lesson in greatness. Though Noyce’s larger than life self–all which was just as Berlin described–humbled me, it also elevated me. Noyce lived a life that said no individual should think he is great on his own, but that every individual can be great by respecting others and bringing out the…
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|Excellent biography of THE man and early valley history,
I have read many histories of Silicon Valley including those
that focused on chips, personal computers, venture capitalists
etcetera, but this one is the best. While there is little here
specifically about the rise of personal computers this book
fills in a tremendous amount of the early history of the
development of the chip, while also providing a very revealing
portrait of Robert Noyce. The range of information here is very
great. However, the book is focused on Noyce, its just that it
sheds light on a great number of events that are part of the
Silicon Valley lore.
Leslie Berlin has done a very thorough job here. Robert
Noyce was the subject of her Phd and she has been a visiting
scholar at Stanford while writing this book. The book has a
full set of notes so that the information she is revealing can
be traced back to the sources she has used. She has clearly had
substantial help from Robert Noyce’s family as there are a
number of elements of this story that could only come from them.
It appears that she has interviewed a large number of Noyce’s
colleagues including people like Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, and
Charlie Sporck and has pretty much gone through almost
everything written by Robert Noyce or about him. There is a list
of about 10 Theses she references and references to each of
Robert Noyce’s testimonies before congress. Ms Berlin has even
interviewed the women who had affairs with Robert Noyce.
The small town background of Mr Noyce has been written about
before. However, it is clear that the entire family was very
well educated going back a couple generations. It is revealed
that Bob’s older brothers also set a strong pace as they were
salutorian and Valadictorians of their class in high school.
One of Bob’s older brothers ended up becoming a professor of
Chemistry at Berkeley. It is clear that Bob was able to have
a fairly normal social life at Grinell while amassing a record
strong enough to gain admission to MITs physics graduate school.
Clearly Noyce’s interest in the transistor started early as he
and his Physics professor were beating their way through Bell
technical reports to understand this work. (probably the reports
that were enshrined in Shockley’s 1955 book on semiconductors)
As Ms Berlin makes clear, Noyce struggled a little bit
at MIT, having to do some remedial work to fill in holes in
his background. Not surprising since he came from a program
with 2 physics professors. However, apparrently one of his
fellow students, went to one of the faculty members on his
behalf and without telling Noyce to ask them to give him more
financial aid as he considered Noyce one of the two smartest
guys in the physics grad program. (the other is revealed to be
Gell-Mann, not bad company) Clearly the faculty agreed to some
extent as after a year he was given a fellowship. Not bad to
go from struggling to a fellowship in a year in pretty fast
company. Ms Berlin also discusses Noyce’s thesis in a bit of
detail and does it in a way that the layman can appreciate how
it fits in. For me it explains why Noyce chose to work under
Nottingham, not widely known, when he could have worked for the
far more widely known Slater. With the typical care she has
brought to this project it is clear that Ms Berlin has had
Physicists examine this thesis and discuss its contents with
her. Noyce was making measurments of surface states. As this
would be pretty relevant to his work related to the planar
process as well as the starting of the first MOS company it was
worth doing.
I found the section on the Shockley Semiconductor lab also
very revealing. It has always been clear that William Shockley
was a better scientist than businessman, however Ms Berlin
reveals many of the disfunctional characteristics of that group
like never before. Shockley’s limitations as a people manager
are clearly mapped. I was not aware of a number of things
regarding the breakout of the Fairchild traitors, specifically
that Noyce was the last of this group to become committed and
the difficulty this group had in finding an investor.
The Fairchild era also contains a number of revelations for
me. The evolution of the planar process out of the solution
of a relability problem on the discretes is new to me. It also
becomes much clearer as to which groups had particular expertise
and went to break off and commercialize their ideas separately.
Fairchild as a source of entrepreneurs is legendary, but here
there is more…
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|a vanished Silicon Valley,
Berlin has performed an amazing amount of detailed research into Noyce’s life. She takes us back to the years when the semiconductor industry was born, and shows us how Noyce helped make it flourish in Silicon Valley.
A striking passage describes how Noyce anticipated the observation of negative differential resistance in a tunnel diode. Some 18 months before Leo Esaki in Tokyo discovered it. Esaki would win the Nobel in Physics for his work. In one of these what-ifs, Noyce could easily have taken that for himself.
By the way, the book’s explanation of negative resistance is a trifle awkward. The quantum mechanical phenomenon cannot be easily explained to a general audience. (As a grad student, I had the same problem of discussing this about my research, to laymen.) But if it puzzles you, remember that it also eluded a lot of people in the 1950s.
You might already be familiar with the broad outlines of how Noyce, Moore and others worked for Robert Shockley, and then left en masse in disgust at his management style. But Berlin furnishes here far more detail than is commonly known. About how Noyce agonised and reluctantly left Shockley.
Likewise, with the later tale of Fairchild Semiconductor and how Noyce and Moore would in turn leave that. This time to found Intel (with Grove). Berlin gives much more detail on this broad outline, that explains the motivations of Noyce and his associates.
Some readers might be amused to see that the CEO of Fairchild resisted handing out stock options to employees, in the grounds that this was “creeping socialism”. Which played no small part in the exodus of its best people.
The book describes a Silicon Valley that has vanished.
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