Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation

1957

Jay Last, Julius Blank, Eugene Kleiner, Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Jean Hoerni, Sheldon Roberts and Victor Grinich were a diverse group of young scientists, all in their mid-20s to mid-30s. They had come to the San Francisco Bay area in 1956 to work for William Shockley, who had won the Nobel Prize that year with John Bordeen and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor at Bell Laboratories. But the eight, disagreeing with Shockley over technology and management issues, left his start-up, Shockley Semiconductor, en masse in late 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor. Shockley called them the "Traitorous Eight."

The creation of Fairchild Semiconductor would establish a model for entrepreneurs for the rest of this century. Each of the men was promised stock options, a then unheard-of arrangement. They dispensed with job titles and had an open working relationship. (1)

Last Updated on October 7, 2002

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