ASSUMING THE ESSENCE

Robert Noyce was shown early Bell Labs transistors in physics class, and knew he wanted to work in that field. After a time at Philco, Noyce confidently moved his wife and two kids to California, bought a house then approached Shockley for a job. A story that sticks to Noyce is that as a spunky Grinell College fratboy, he stole an Iowa farmer's pig. When Noyce broke away from Shockley Semiconductor in 1957Ñasked by seven of the "traitorous" young researchers to lead them in their new companyÑthe crusty old Shockley accused them all of stealing his expertise. This ushered in the Valley's age of Confidentiality and Non-Competition Agreements and the technologist as free agent, essentially broken off from corporate loyalties. Shockley misspent his final years, in porcine bumptiousness, besmirching his scientific rep with cockamamie racial theories; Noyce kept his mind on real work.

What is essential? The chip. At Fairchild Noyce invented the integrated chip (a silicon chip with many transistors etched into it, all at once). With Gordon Moore, Noyce left Fairchild in 1968 and founded Intel. There he gave his young employees room to accomplish their research, and he recognized Ted Hoff's microprocessor as the next big thing. Intel proved to be more than a pig in a poke.

Intel was ripe for parody when many engineers snickered at those "Satan Inside" stickers in the 1990s. The "Traitorous Eight" honored the father Shockley by betraying him. Did I betray my own engineer father by becoming an artist? Or did I honor the displaced part of him voted "Most Artistic" in highschool, Cambridge (MA) High and Latin '24? It's as if once I moved back east to a tenure-track job, he thought OK, you can be the Professor Mosher now, and peacefully died at age 94, living at home till the end.

I do like the late '50s-early '60s sartorial style of those guys like Moore, the white shirt (often short-sleeved) and necktie. I inherited a bunch of ties I like from my father, his daily wear as an engineering professor. Engineers like him, and Moore, carried their pens in a pocket protector. About 1990 I suggested to BayCHI, the Computer Human Interface club, that it issue pocket protectors sporting their logo; maybe they will someday.

References consulted:

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/noyce.html;p

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