Traitorous Eight

The Traitorous Eight, as they would become known, are eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to form Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. [cite book|title=Microprocessor Design|last=McFarland|first=Grant|publisher=McGraw Hill|date=2006] More neutral terms include the "Fairchild Eight" and the "Shockley Eight." They have sometimes been called "Fairchildren," although this term has been also used to refer either to Fairchild alumni or to its spinoff companies.

The Eight

* Julius Blank
* Victor Grinich
* Jean Hoerni
* Eugene Kleiner
* Jay Last
* Gordon Moore
* Robert Noyce
* Sheldon Roberts

History

According to authors Joseph Blasi, Douglas Kruse, and Aaron Bernstein, these eight men left because they did not agree with William Shockley's authoritarian managerial style and his practice of expecting a certain result instead of letting the research guide the process. [cite book |title=In the Company of Owners: The Truth About Stock Options (And Why Every Employee Should Have Them)| last=Blasi|first=Joseph|coauthors="Douglas Kruse and Aaron Bernstein" |pages=7 |publisher=Basic Books |date=2003|chapter=1|chapterurl=http://www.beysterinstitute.org/other_resources/bookstore/empown/Chapter1.pdf] There is no record of Shockley ever using the term "traitorous eight," and his wife denied that he ever used it. [cite book |title=Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley| last=Shurkin|first=Joel |page =181 |publisher=Macmillan |date=2006]

The eight employees went to Arnold Beckman and asked him to replace Shockley. Beckman tried to find a new manager and left Shockley as a director with limited powers. As the search dragged on, it became apparent that Beckman could not find a replacement, so he restored Shockley's responsibilities. The eight men then resigned and signed a research contract with Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation to form Fairchild Semiconductor.

Their entrepreneurial desires did not end with Fairchild. Like many other Fairchild employees, seven of the eight went on to found various spinoff companies. These spinoffs and their founders are sometimes known as "Fairchildren". The most successful were Noyce and Moore, founders of Intel, and Kleiner, co-founder of the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm. Additionally, Roberts, Hoerni and Last founded what later became Teledyne, while Blank co-founded Xicor. Grinich became a professor at UC Berkeley and Stanford University

Fairchildren

The term "Fairchildren" refers to the seminal role that Fairchild Semiconductor played in spawning spin-off companies in Silicon Valley. It is a play on the words "Fairchild" and "children," the latter referring to the formation of (unofficial) spin-off companies from a parent company.

In research, reporting and popular lore related to Silicon Valley, the term "Fairchildren" has been variously used to refer to:

# The spin-off companies created by former employees of Fairchild Semiconductor. This is the usage of historian Leslie Berlin (the acknowledged expert on Fairchild) in her 2001 journal article [Leslie R. Berlin, "Robert Noyce and the Rise and Fall of Fairchild Semiconductor, 1957–1968," "Business History Review," 75, 1 (2001), 63-101] , in her 2001 doctoral dissertation [Leslie R. Berlin, "Entrepreneurship and the Rise of Silicon Valley: The Career of Robert Noyce, 1956-1990," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2001] , and in her biography of Robert Noyce [Leslie Berlin, [http://www.themanbehindthemicrochip.com/ "The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley,"] New York: Oxford University Press, 2005] .
# The founders of such firms. This is the earliest usage, e.g. Tom Wolfe's 1983 profile of Noyce [Tom Wolfe, "The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce," "Esquire," December 1983, pp. 346-374] or a 5,000-word profile of Silicon Valley [Henry Norr, "Growth of a Silicon Empire," "San Francisco Chronicle," December 27, 1999, p. D1] in 1999.
# Former Fairchild Semiconductor employees, as in a 1988 "New York Times" article. [Andrew Pollack, "Fathers of Silicon Valley Reunited," "New York Times,," April 16, 1988, p. 41.]
# The original founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, more commonly known as the "Traitorous Eight", "Fairchild Eight" or "Shockley Eight". This has been used by a [http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/corgs/fairchild.html PBS website] and a book on stock options. [cite book |title=In the Company of Owners: The Truth About Stock Options (And Why Every Employee Should Have Them)| last=Blasi|first=Joseph|coauthors="Douglas Kruse, and Aaron Bernstein" |pages=7 |publisher=Basic Books |date=2003|chapter=1|chapterurl=http://www.beysterinstitute.org/other_resources/bookstore/empown/Chapter1.pdf]

Note that there is an overlap among the last three categories, as some of the Fairchild Eight (such as Noyce and Eugene Kleiner) left Fairchild to form other companies.

References

External links

* [http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9905/19/1958.idg/index.html 1999 Computerworld interview with Eugene Kleiner, Julius Blank and Jay Last]
* [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/moore/index.html The Accidental Entrepreneur, (Gordon E. Moore): From Caltech to Intel]
* [http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/eight/index.html Transistorized! (PBS)]