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 detail that indicated the frustrations that
may have lead to it and the expertise of the players. I knew
that Charlie Sporck had been the manufacturing manager at
Fairchild but I didnt know he had been the Operating manager
for a period or that Fairchild's inability to recruit against
other startups because the NY gang refused to allow stock
options was a problem for them. Essentially Sporck was
Fairchild's Andy Grove. Anybody in the valley has probably
experienced this phenomenon. I'm amazed that Fairchild was
suffering from this in the early 60s.
Similarly there are many revealing insights about the
startup of Intel. In the context it becomes easier to
understand the idea behind the company. I did not know that
Ted Hoff was hired to be the computer architecture guru on the
recommendation of Stanford faculty and the Busicom project that
lead to the early Microprocessor is discussed in more detail
than I've seen before.
In summary this is an outstanding book which is done with
great care and attention to detail by a young historian. The
book reads very easily for both the person who is nontechnical
as well as someone with a tech background. There is plenty here
for all. I think Ms Berlin should get the Pulitzer prize for
biography for this one.
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Reviews with images
Publisher screwed up a good book. Missing pages.
The writing is great, publisher screwed up. Every ten pages or so, seemingly at random, pages are not printed and are hence missing from the book.
Top reviews from other countries
Bhaskar Chowdhury
Superb book, a must read for any serious IT professional
Reviewed in India on April 24, 2018Joseph Schuldhaus
Facinating story of a man almost single-handedly changed the world.
Reviewed in Canada on March 23, 2013
Richard C White
Historical Document
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 13, 2013gk
Two thirds of the book is great
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2014