RobertNoyce
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Google doodle celebrates Robert Noyce; Intel co-founder and 'Mayor of Silicon Valley'
The honor of having your own Google Doodle is bestowed upon only a few very special individuals like Gregor Mendel, Alexander Calder and Lucille Ball. Today's entrant celebrates the 84th birthday of the late Robert "Bob" Noyce, co-inventor of the microchip. After co-founding Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, he mentored younger engineers to earn the nickname "the Mayor of Silicon Valley." Surf on over to the Google homepage and you'll see its logo imprinted over a microprocessor, which Bob helped to birth.
Julius Blank, chip-making pioneer and Fairchild co-founder, dies at 86
Somber news coming out of Palo Alto today, where Julius Blank, the man who helped found the groundbreaking chipmaker Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, has passed away at the age of 86. The Manhattan-born Blank (pictured third from left, above) began his engineering career in 1952, when he joined AT&T's Western Electric plant in New Jersey. As a member of the engineering group at the plant, Blank helped create phone technology that allowed users to dial long-distance numbers without going through an operator. It was also at Western Electric where he met fellow engineer Eugene Kleiner. In 1956, Blank and Kleiner left AT&T to work at the lab of Nobel Prize-winning physicist William B. Shockley, but departed just one year later (amid to start Fairchild, alongside a group of six other computer scientists that included future Intel Corporation founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. At their new labs, Blank and his peers developed an inexpensive method for manufacturing silicon chips, earning them $1.5 million in capital from a single investor. As the only two with any manufacturing experience, Blank and Kleiner were charged with bringing the dream to fruition -- a task that required them to build the chips from scratch, beginning with the machinery for growing silicon crystals. They succeeded, of course, and in 1969, Blank left Fairchild to start Xicor, a tech firm that Intersil would later buy for $529 million, in 2004. But his legacy will forever be linked to those early days at Fairchild, where, as Blank described in a 2008 interview, he and his colleagues were able to experience the unique thrill of "building something from nothing." Julius Blank is survived by his two sons, Jeffrey and David, and two grandsons. [Photo courtesy of Joan Seidel / AP 1999]
Today marks 50th anniversary of first silicon integrated circuit patent (and the entire computing industry)
There's little question that the last 50 years have represented the most innovative half-century in human history, and today marks the anniversary of the invention that started it all: the silicon-based integrated circuit. Robert Noyce received the landmark US patent on April 25, 1961, going on to found Intel Corporation with Gordon E. Moore (of Moore's Law fame) in 1968. He wasn't the first to invent the integrated circuit -- the inventor of the pocket calculator Jack Kilby patented a similar technology on a germanium wafer for Texas Instruments a few months prior. Noyce's silicon version stuck, however, and is responsible for Moore's estimated $3.7 billion net worth, not to mention the success of the entire computing industry. Holding 16 other patents and credited as a mentor of Steve Jobs, Noyce was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1987, and continued to shape the computing industry until his death in 1990. If Moore's Law continues to hold true, as we anticipate it will, we expect the next 50 years to be even more exciting than the last. Let's meet back here in 2061.
