The Man behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley (review)

The last few years have seen a number of books on the rise of Silicon Valley. Martin Kenney's Understanding Silicon Valley (2000), Ross Bassett's To the Digital Age (2002), Frederick Terman at Stanford by C. Stewart Gillmor (2004), and my own book on Making Silicon Valley (2006) are notable examples. Another addition to this literature is The Man behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin. In this well-written and well-researched volume, Berlin narrates the life of Robert Noyce, the innovator–entrepreneur who invented the planar integrated circuit and co-founded two major Silicon Valley corporations, Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.

The Man behind the Microchip is a paean to Noyce and his success. Berlin presents Noyce as the quintessential Silicon Valley hero—a brilliant businessman and an exceptionally creative scientific mind. She gives him much credit for the development of microelectronics, for the growth of Fairchild and Intel, and more generally for the "invention" of Silicon Valley. Starting with Noyce's religious up-bringing in a small Mid-Western town, Berlin rapidly moves to his training in physics at Grinnell and MIT and to his research work at Philco and Shockley Semiconductor. She reveals that at Shockley Semiconductor, Noyce conceived of the tunnel diode (also known as the Esaki diode) but that William Shockley, the leader of the lab, asked him to drop this line of research. According to Berlin, Shockley's edict cost Noyce the Nobel Prize in physics. The Prize went to Leo Esaki instead. In 1957, Noyce co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor. It was at Fairchild that Noyce patented the idea of the planar integrated circuit, an important innovation that sustained the semiconductor industry's subsequent expansion. Berlin notes—rightly so—that Noyce did not reduce the integrated circuit idea to practice and that this work was done by Jay Last, another Fairchild Semiconductor founder.

In 1968, management turmoil at Fairchild Camera and Instrument, Fairchild Semiconductor's parent company, and technological and business opportunities in the area of MOS memories led Noyce and Gordon Moore to form Intel Corp. Intel became the leading manufacturer of MOS memories and microprocessors. Having accumulated significant wealth, Noyce partially retired from Intel in the late 1970s. He turned his attention to the growing Japanese threat to the U.S. semiconductor industry. He lobbied Congress for greater tariffs on Japanese chips and for direct government support to U.S. firms. He also headed SEMATECH, the consortium designed to help American semiconductor corporations regain their competitive edge in manufacturing. Spicing up the business narrative is an account of Noyce's troubled family life and numerous extra-marital affairs. Noyce was an inveterate and reckless womanizer, who among other feats introduced his mistresses into his bedroom through the window when his children were in the house.

The Man behind the Microchip makes for an enjoyable and, at times, titillating read. But one can not but wonder whether Berlin gives Noyce a disproportionate amount of credit for Fairchild's and Intel's success. For example, it might be argued that Moore was responsible for guiding business strategy and technology development at Intel as much as or more so than Noyce. Aside from the integrated circuit idea and innovative process work in the late 1950s, Noyce's technical contributions were limited. Noyce's main strength may have been in sales and marketing as he built large markets for microchips. Similarly, it is difficult, as the book's subtitle implies, to claim that Noyce "invented" Silicon Valley. The electronics cluster on the San Francisco Peninsula with firms such as Varian Associates, Litton Industries, and Hewlett-Packard preceded Noyce's move to the region by several decades. However, my greatest reservation regarding The Man behind the Microchip has to do with the treatment of Noyce himself. Curiously, Noyce is as enigmatic at the beginning at the book...