A genealogy of the firm that founded the Valley. From Shockley's Mountain View storefront through the Traitorous Eight, to the diaspora that put a Fairchild alumnus at the head of every consequential American chip company by 1971.
William Shockley returned to Palo Alto a Nobel laureate with a paranoid streak. He recorded telephone calls. He published staff salaries. He demanded researchers rank one another's competence. When a secretary cut her hand on a thumbtack, he had her tested for sabotage.
By June 1957, seven of his hires had decided to leave. Robert Noyce, the youngest manager and the one Shockley most trusted, joined late — only after the others had committed.
"The most painful year of my professional life." — Robert Noyce, on Shockley SemiconductorAt the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, Alfred Coyle pulled ten freshly minted dollar bills from his wallet, asked each of the eight men to sign every one, and handed them out as the company's first paper contracts. There was no other paperwork.
Sherman Fairchild, the largest individual IBM shareholder, agreed to lend $1.38 million through his camera-and-aircraft company. By 1959 his firm exercised the buyout option — each of the eight walked away with about $250,000 in stock.
William Shockley called them the traitorous eight. The label stuck for fifty years, with something close to amusement.Sherman Fairchild's New York leadership refused to extend stock options past the founders. The young silicon engineers watched the Eight's money compound while their own salaries crept up by single digits. They began to leave.
Hoerni & Last → Amelco (1961). Sporck → National Semi (1967). Sanders → AMD (1969). Valentine → Sequoia. Kleiner → Kleiner Perkins. Noyce & Moore & Grove → Intel (1968).
By 1971, more than 50 firms in Santa Clara County could trace their founders to Fairchild. The model was no longer a company. It was a way of working.