I am surprised that there are so few hacker comments here. The story sends me the goosebumps and its a keeper -- Grinnell College in Iowa where the Silicon Valley revolution really began, what really made landing on the moon possible, and this Robert Noyce quote in Wiki:
In his last interview, Noyce was asked what he would do if he were "emperor" of the United States. He said that he would, among other things, "…make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level."
It's because Noyce passed away before he got widely famous like eg Gordon Moore. Outside of tech circles Andy Grove never got quite as famous as Gordon Moore, due to Moore's Law. William Shockley is less famous than all of them. And none of which became remotely as famous as Gates, and those that have come along since. Noyce was a quiet giant.
Plus, to amplify that, there are a lot more software hackers here than hardware hackers.
When Noyce died in 1990, the computer revolution had only barely crawled out of the cave. Silicon Valley and the US were in a recession; SV's financial might and reach was tiny compared to what it is today. It was only in the late 1980s that computer sales finally took off, global PC shipments were ~9 million in 1987, ~20 million by 1990, and 100 million by 1998.
Look at the tech industry in, say, 1988:
Microsoft $590m in sales. Intel $2.8b in sales. Apple was at $4b in sales. Those were three of the giants, and all of those figures were huge increases over just a few years prior.
GM's sales by comparison in 1988, were $110 billion. The tech industry was tiny 30 years ago.
On a side note, the 1988 Intel annual report opens with a very neat 20 year anniversary walk-through of their technology history:
Good catch - sorry for the dupe. I searched before submitting but only searched for the URL, not the title, so I only found submissions with no votes or discussion.
Fascinating story. I was initially compelled to read it since I will soon be working in the "Robert Noyce" building, and now I know why the CEO has a cubicle like everyone else.
This is in general a great BBC documentary from 1978, well worth watching in full. It might be the only time Intel permitted cameras to record the production process of silicon chips?
Uh? "This video contains content from Crowley Media, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."
Anyone having the same problem? (I'm in NY)
EDIT: ok, I got it. This is from BBC, so likely only available in the UK. I found a copy on their site [1], and the player is more explicit - "BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues." Need to watch through VPN...
Those tech demos at the beginning (text to speech and voice control) feel funny considering that we are still tackling and demoing basically the same things. Sure, something like Google Duplex is slightly more advanced, but the concept of having computer communicate with voice (on both ways) seem to have been fascinating people since the beginnings of computing. There are also parallels to be drawn between self-driving cars and that computer controlled wheel-chair.
Plus ça change
edit: oh wow, more of the same:
> Such chips will totally revolutionarize our way of life, they are the reason why Japan is abandoning its ship building, and why our children will grow up without jobs to go to
They are playing the "robots are stealing our jobs" line very heavily in the video. Insightful viewing for modern audience to gain perspective for current discussions.
Interesting in the same way is the question, why didn't the techno-utopia arrive? Even 1980s technology is enough to achieve a big lot of automation that we still dont see in society
Lots of the automation did happen. Heck, the chip manufacturing detailed in the video itself is great example; pretty much all of the human labor shown there has been eliminated.
Looking at economic trends of the past 100 or so years, there is marked change beginning in the late 70s, especially in various forms of equality. Using automation alone for explaining that would be a folly, but equally folly would be to say that automation has had no economic effect.
Interestingly, Robert Noyce thought this article was a bit of a tall tale by Tom Wolfe. Here's a quote by him from 1984:
> It's interesting to me to see what an enormous amount of publicity the microchip has gotten recently including that article of Tom Wolfe's. Incidentally, on that article of Tom Wolfe's, I do want to point out that Tom Wolfe is first of all a novelist. And only secondarily is he a historian but everything that appears in print of course is true as you've all learned. Particularly if you ever read something that you know something about.
A few interesting takeaways from skimming the article:
* Shockley was ahead of his time with peer-ranking and transparent salaries
* Ageism and zero work-life balance has been a feature of the Silicon Valley landscape since its inception
* In the 1950's, the reference point for what a youthful, technically innovative, highly entrepreneurial industry would look like was the automobile industry - which would not at all be obvious to a modern reader who didn't know the early history of automobiles (I know the piece was written in the 80's, but for that part Wolfe is taking the perspective of someone in the burgeoning Silicon Valley of the 50's-60s)
The PBS American Experience episode, "Silicon Valley," is an excellent retelling of the Noyce-Fairchild-Intel story, well worth watching. The full episode doesn't appear to be online anymore, but here are the first 16 minutes: https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-silicon-valley...
Yep, saw this when it first aired, and it remains one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences I've ever had.
EDIT: The full episode is available on Amazon Prime for anyone who is interested.
In his last interview, Noyce was asked what he would do if he were "emperor" of the United States. He said that he would, among other things, "…make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level."