Chapter One
The Impossible Question
In August 1957 William Shockley was recruiting staff for his Palo
Alto, California, start up, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.
Shockley had been part of the Bell Labs team that invented the
transistor. He had quit his job and come west to start his own
company, telling people his goal was to make a million dollars.
Everyone thought he was crazy. Shockley knew he wasn't. Unlike a lot
of the people at Bell Labs, he knew the transistor was going to be
big.
Shockley had an idea about how to make transistors cheaply. He was
going to fabricate them out of silicon. He had come to this valley,
south of San Francisco, to start production. He felt like he was on
the cusp of history, in the right place at the right time. All that
he needed wa ...
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