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Oct 26, 2024 · Fairchild Semiconductor, former American electronics company that shares credit with Texas Instruments Incorporated for the invention of the integrated circuit. Founded in 1957, Fairchild was among the earliest firms to successfully manufacture transistors and integrated circuits.
- Founding
- Jean Hoerni’S Planar Process
- Robert Noyce’s Integrated Circuit
- Gordon Moore’s “Law”
- An Innovation Machine
- Manufacturing and Marketing Innovation
- “A Company of Legend”
- Coda
- References
- Further Reading
With funding from Southern California industrialist Arnold Beckman, William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories established his Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California, in 1955. He attracted a group of bright young engineers and scientists that he trained in the art of working with silicon s...
In 1959 co-founder Jean Hoerni invented a transistor structure covered with an insulating layer of silicon dioxide (glass) to protect the chip. Known for their flat surface profile as “planar” devices, they were more reliable and offered superior electrical characteristics to competing products. By the end of 1961, their success vaulted Fairchild t...
Fairchild co-founder Robert Noyce conceived the ideaof using aluminum metal deposited on top of Hoerni’s layer of glass to selectively interconnect transistors, resistors, and other components formed in the underlying silicon wafer to create an integrated electronic circuit (IC). Fairchild introduced its first IC, or microchip, a digital logic func...
In 1965 Director of R&D Gordon Moore wrote an article for Electronics magazine that described a doubling in each of the prior four years in the number of transistors that could be fabricated economically on a chip. If this rate continued, he projected that the number of transistors per chip would reach 65,000 in 1975.4 In 1975 Moore, by then presid...
Through the decade of the 1960s, the company continued to innovate in other important areas of semiconductor technology. Fairchild scientists, led by Bruce Deal, Andy Grove, and Ed Snow, pioneered reliable metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) production. Federico Faggin and Tom Klien built the first commercial silicon-gate devices. Frank Wanlass patente...
Fairchild opened its first plant outside the Bay Area in South Portland, Maine, in 1962. As one of the first US technology companies to expand into Asia, C. E. (Ed) Pausa led the construction of a factory in Hong Kong in 1964. Two years later Hong Kong employed 5,000 workers versus 3,000 in California. The success of this venture attracted other co...
According to journalist Michael Malone, “Fairchild Semiconductor was a company of legend – perhaps the most extraordinary collection of business talent ever assembled in a startup company. If Fairchild had a corporate culture it could only be described as volatility incarnate... brilliant young engineers and marketers working long days, and partyin...
Starved by the parent company for funds for investment in new production facilities, for equity to retain key employees, and torn by internal organizational issues, by the late 1960s the semiconductor division encountered serious problems with introducing new products and satisfying fast growing customer demand. As Gordon Moore explained: “Fairchil...
Fairchild Camera & Instrument Corporation, Annual Report 1961.Christophe Lécuyer, Making Silicon Valley(The MIT Press, 2006).Eldon C. Hall, Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer(American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc., 1996).Gordon Moore, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” Electronics Magazine, vol. 38, no. 8 (April 19, 1965).Arnold Thackray, David Brock, Rachel Jones, Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary(Basic Books, New York, 2015).Leslie Berlin, The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley(Oxford, 2005).Christophe Lécuyer and David Brock, Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor(MIT Press, 2010).David Laws and Michael Riordan, “Making Micrologic: The Development of the Planar IC at Fairchild Semiconductor, 1957-1963,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing(January 2012): 20-36.Charles Stebbins Fairchild (April 30, 1842 – November 24, 1924) was an American businessman and politician who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1887 to 1889 and Attorney General of New York from 1876 to 1877.
Dec 13, 2011 · Robert Noyce's career at Fairchild Semiconductor sheds light on several developments that were central to the growth of Silicon Valley and the semiconductor industry: entrepreneurship, technical leadership, and the management of growth in a high-technology company.
- Leslie R. Berlin
- 2001
David Fairchild played an important role in introducing cotton to the southwestern United States. Circa 1900, the United States led the world in cotton production, with its large production of “upland” cotton in the southeastern part of the country, and its high quality sea island along the Atlantic coast.
How does this biography of Helen Fairchild support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about how people thought and felt about the First World War? Compare and contrast Helen Fairchild’s decision to volunteer as a nurse to Rosa Luxemburg’s opposition to the war.
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Fairchild Semiconductor personnel invented the planar manufacturing process, the monolithic integrated circuit, and CMOS technology – the foundations of every significant computer chip made today.
