Page 56 - EE Times Europe March 2022

56 EE|Times EUROPE

EE TIMES 50TH ANNIVERSARY
The Roots of Silicon Valley, Part 1:

Founders, Legend, Legacy

By Malcolm Penn, Future Horizons
As part of our EE Times 50th Anniversary Special, this three-part series looks at the
74-year history of Silicon Valley, including how it came to be; why the captains of
the nascent industry set up shop in California; and the legacy of William Shockley

Jr., Fairchild, and the “Fairchildren” who laid much of the foundation for the
semiconductor industry we know today. Part 1 considers the birth of the transistor,
how Shockley ended up in Silicon Valley, the origins of Fairchild Semiconductor, how
the pioneering startup was funded, and what eventually happened to Shockley.

WILLIAM SHOCKLEY JR. AND THE BIRTH tors and four-layer (Shockley) diodes. Had he Beckman and Shockley signed a letter of
OF THE TRANSISTOR decided instead to remain on the East Coast intent to create the Shockley Semi-
The transistor was successfully demon- — close to Bell Labs, MIT, or IBM in Vermont Conductor Laboratory (the hyphenation was
strated on Dec. 23, 1947, at Bell Laboratories — Silicon Valley might well have developed on then common practice) as a Beckman Instru-
(Murray Hill, New Jersey), the research arm the East Coast rather than the West Coast of ments subsidiary under Shockley’s direction.
of American Telephone and Telegraph Co. the United States. The geographical difference The new group would specialize in semi-
The three Bell researchers credited with its almost certainly would have shaped an indus- conductors, beginning with the automated
invention were William “Bill” Shockley Jr.; try with a markedly different personality. production of diffused-base transistors.
John Bardeen, the department head and group In Palo Alto, Shockley found a sponsor Shockley’s original plan was to establish the
leader; and Walter Brattain. Shockley contin- in Raytheon, a pioneer in what came to be laboratory in Palo Alto, close to his mother’s
ued to work on development at Bell Labs until known as electronic warfare. But Raytheon’s home, but that changed when Fred Terman,
1955 when, having foreseen the transistor’s support was short-lived. Undeterred, Shock- provost at Stanford University and central
potential and looking to work for more than ley, who had been one of Arnold Beckman’s figure in the rise of Silicon Valley, offered him
a salary, he quit to set up the world’s first students at CalTech, turned to him for advice space in Stanford’s new industrial park at
semiconductor company, becoming a de facto on how to raise US$1 million in seed money. 381 San Antonio Rd. in Mountain View. Beck-
industry father. Beckman was an American chemist, inventor, man bought licenses on all necessary patents
Shockley was born in London on Feb. 13, entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of the hugely for US$25,000, and the company was launched
1910, the son of William Hillman Shockley, a successful Beckman Instruments — and now in February 1956.
mining engineer born in Massachusetts, and also a budding financier who believed that
his wife, Mary (née Bradford), who had also Shockley’s new inventions would be beneficial STANFORD SOWS THE SEEDS
been engaged in mining as a deputy mineral to his own company. So rather than pass the The seeds for Stanford’s high-tech relation-
surveyor in Nevada. opportunity to his competitors, he agreed to ship with industry were sewn much earlier. In
The family returned to the United States in create and fund a laboratory on the condition 1936, Sigurd and Russell Varian — together
1913, setting up home in Palo Alto, California, that the lab would work to bring its discover- with William Hansen, Russell’s ex-college
when Mary joined the Mining Engineering ies to mass production within two years. roommate and by then a professor at
Department faculty at Stanford University.
But for this twist of fate — given that both
Shockley’s parents were mining engineers
— the family could have instead settled in
Colorado, Nevada, or West Virginia.
William Jr. earned his B.S. degree at the
California Institute of Technology (CalTech)
in 1932 before moving to the East Coast to
study at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology (MIT) under J.C. Slater. He obtained
his Ph.D. there in 1936, submitting a thesis on
the energy band structure of sodium chloride,
and joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, where
he remained until his resignation in 1955.
Upon leaving Bell Labs, Shockley moved
back to Palo Alto (where his ailing mother
still resided), initially as a visiting professor
at Stanford but with the vision to establish his
own semiconductor company making transis- Shockley Semi-Conductor Laboratory (Source: Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation)

MARCH 2022 | www.eetimes.eu