A new documentary rolls back the years to 1957 and the amazing but little-told story of the "traitorous eight" and how they left one of the first semiconductor companies to found the first startup of the computer age - Fairchild Semiconductor.
This is a story that wouldn't be out of place in a high power period piece like Mad Men. In 1957 we were still figuring out how to make transistors that didn't look like Rube Goldberg machines. Fairchild managed to create the first flat or planar transistor and while this might just seem to be to do with packaging it was the start of the technology need to create the silicon chip and eventually the microprocessor.
Although the first microchip was made at Fairchild, a group of engineers grew discontented with the situation and broke away to form a small startup called "Intel" - wonder whatever happened to that....
Silicon Valley premieres February 19, 2013 on PBS.
"the traitorous eight" sat below the Fairchild logo
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