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Fairchild Semiconductor
- Year
- 1957
- Creator
- Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Sheldon Roberts
- Company
- Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation (parent)
- Location
- 844 East Charleston Road, Palo Alto, California
Description
Fairchild Semiconductor is the silicon company that eight scientists from Shockley's lab started in 1957. The photo shows its first building at 844 East Charleston Road in Palo Alto, now a California Historical Landmark.
Importance
Arthur Rock of Hayden, Stone found the investor, Fairchild Camera and Instrument, which supplied approximately $1.38 million. At Fairchild, the team made the planar process and the first commercial integrated circuits. A 1986 industry chart traced 126 semiconductor companies to Fairchild.
Interesting fact
Fairchild Camera and Instrument had an option to buy the whole company for $3 million, and it used that option in 1959.
Acquisition
Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation · 1959 · $3,000,000
Sources
- Fairchild Semiconductor: The 60th Anniversary of a Silicon Valley Legend (David Laws) ↗Computer History Museum · 2017-09-19
- Fairchild, Fairchildren, and the Family Tree of Silicon Valley (David Laws) ↗Computer History Museum · 2016-12-20
- Silicon Valley timeline ↗PBS American Experience
- Site of Invention of the First Commercially Practicable Integrated Circuit (California Historical Landmark No. 1000) ↗California Office of Historic Preservation · 1991-05-08
- Arthur Rock: Early Bay Area Venture Capitalists: Shaping the Economic and Business Landscape (interviewed by Sally Smith Hughes) ↗Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley · 2009