Robert Norton Noyce

• Born: December 12, 1927
• Birthplace: Burlington, Iowa
• Died: June 30, 1990
• Place of death: Austin, Texas

American electrical engineer

Noyce’s development of the integrated circuit made possible the mass production of very complex computer circuitry, thus paving the way for the digital revolution. His subsequent leadership of the American semiconductor industry helped consolidate its preeminence.

Primary fields: Computer science; electronics and electrical engineering

Primary invention: Integrated circuit

Early Life

Robert Norton Noyce was born in Iowa to a Congregationalist minister. Although the position did not pay an enormous amount of money, the family was well enough off for Mrs. Noyce to be able to have a hospital birth, something still considered unusual at the time. For the next several years, the Noyce family moved from town to town as Reverend Noyce took work with various congregations before settling permanently in Grinnell, a small town west of Des Moines.

Young Robert showed an interest in science and technology from a very early age and was soon working various part-time jobs in order to buy such delights as a crystal radio kit. However, he was not the stereotypical nerd, fascinated with technology to the exclusion of all else. He also showed a striking aptitude for sports, which he turned to good use in some of his more daring and physical mechanical exploits such as building and flying a glider. With his slim, muscular build and good looks, he was also quite successful with the opposite sex.

However, while he was a student at Grinnell College, an adolescent lark nearly wrecked his promising career. Several young men in his dormitory took it upon themselves to throw a genuine Hawaiian luau, complete with a roast pig. It fell upon Robert and another strapping young athlete to acquire the pig, a feat they accomplished by stealing one from a nearby farmer’s pen. Although the event was a success, Robert was subsequently struck with pangs of conscience and turned himself in as the thief. Only because of his father’s standing as a local minister and the intercession of one of the professors did he avoid criminal proceedings. Instead, he was suspended for a semester; he used that time to work at a local insurance company and gain experience with the practical side of mathematics.

When he returned to Grinnell College, he learned about a fascinating new development, the transistor. Immediately, he perceived the breadth of possibilities represented by solid-state electronics and set his sights on graduate work at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After he completed his Ph.D. there, he took a position with Philco, a well-known manufacturer of radios and televisions.

Life’s Work

The job at Philco put Noyce in the position to do real practical science and to become noted in wider circles through monographs and papers in technical journals. This work brought him to the attention of William Shockley, one of the coinventors of the transistor. Shockley had left Bell Laboratories to found his own company, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, and he was looking for top-flight talent to implement his new ideas for more sophisticated transistors. Noyce was delighted at the opportunity to work with the prominent physicist.

However, the shine soon wore off the job. Though Shockley was a brilliant physicist, when it came to personnel management he was an utter dunce. When he launched a full-scale sabotage investigation over a fragment of metal that turned out to be a pushpin that had lost its protective glass head, several engineers, including Noyce, decided they had had enough. This group, which Shockley would later condemn as the “Traitorous Eight,” found venture capital from Fairchild Camera and Instrument and thus founded Fairchild Semiconductor just down the road from Shockley’s company.

However, Fairchild’s products were still all discrete transistors, which meant they needed to be soldered onto circuit boards in order to create useful electronic devices. While such transistors were fine for simple devices, in complex circuits it became likely that at least one solder would be faulty, rendering the entire circuit inoperable. This “tyranny of numbers” became the consuming problem for electrical engineers of the 1950’s. Noyce hit upon the solution almost by accident, when Fairchild’s patent attorney asked him to think of as many possible uses for a new fabrication method. Although the integrated circuit was a major breakthrough, Noyce’s corporate bosses at Fairchild Camera and Instrument had little understanding of how to market it. Growing increasingly frustrated with the situation, Noyce and fellow “Traitorous Eight” member Gordon Moore left Fairchild to found Intel.

In founding his own company, however, Noyce left the laboratory behind for good. The integrated circuit would be his last significant invention. Henceforth, he would be primarily an administrator, leading others such as Ted Hoff, who took the integrated circuit to the next step with the microprocessor. Noyce created a new corporate culture at Intel, with a relatively flat hierarchy. Although he was fiercely competitive toward other companies, he wanted to minimize internal competition, emphasizing that everyone at Intel was on the same team with the same goal. There were no executive privileges, even for himself. He had no office, just a cubicle with shoulder-high partitions, and he ate his lunches in the corporate lunchroom rather than in a private executive dining room. He parked in whatever spot happened to be available when he arrived each morning, and if he were to run late one morning, his name would be posted on the “late list” just like any other Intel employee.

By the 1980’s, Noyce had largely moved away from the day-to-day administration of Intel to address larger issues in the semiconductor industry. Seeing weaknesses in key parts of the industry, he began to push for a consortium that would help draw together the various companies to protect the interests of the industry. Thus, SEMATECH was born. When he was made its head, he had to leave his beloved Silicon Valley and move to Austin, Texas. He lived there for four years, until his sudden death of a heart attack in 1990 at the age of sixty-two. As a result, he missed his opportunity to win his share of a Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Jack St. Clair Kilby in 2000.

Impact

In addition to his work with the integrated circuit, the foundation of the digital revolution, Noyce was critical in the development of California’s Santa Clara Valley as a hub of technology innovation. Twice leaving employers to found new companies, he set a pattern that would mark the culture of Silicon Valley, showing that there was little disgrace attached to frequent job changes and that people could easily find venture capital to start their own companies. The culture that Noyce created was absolutely essential to the risk-taking that enabled the rapid growth of the computer industry. In addition, the relatively flat corporate hierarchy he fostered at Intel paved the way for the even more relaxed jeans-and-sneakers culture of the next generation of Silicon Valley companies, including Apple and Google.

Bibliography

Berlin, Leslie. The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Argues that Noyce and Fairchild Semiconductor were primarily responsible for Santa Clara County, California, becoming a major center of the computer industry.

Jackson, Tim. Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Chip Company. New York: Dutton, 1997. Solid corporate history that focuses on the Grove years but also includes material about the founding of Intel.

Reid, T. R. The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution. New York: Random House, 2001. A basic history of the development of the microchip, covering the work of both Noyce and Kilby.

Riordan, Michael, and Lillian Hoddeson. Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Helps place the microchip in the larger context of the convergence of information technology.

Seitz, Frederick, and Norman G. Einspruch. Electronic Genie: The Tangled History of Silicon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Includes information on Noyce and the development of the integrated circuit.

Yu, Albert. Creating the Digital Future: The Secrets of Consistent Innovation at Intel. New York: Free Press, 1998. Sets the development of the integrated circuit in the context of Intel’s founding and growth to become an industry leader.