Upcoming Program About Origins Of Fairchild Semiconductor And Silicon Valley

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Please see the below link for an article about the upcoming PBS Program about the beginnings of Silicon Valley. As much as I am loath to say it, the Government was instrumental in the development of the integrated circuit and all that inevitably followed. At that time the National Governments were the only real customers for the product. To quote Tom Wolfe "No Bucks, No Buck Rodgers." In order to lob a 20 Megaton Unit over the North Pole postmarked "You Know Who", tubes and wires had to be superseded by something weighing less than 1 percent as much. This had the serendipitous effect of making the Communications Satellite (useful) and Manned Space Exploration (useful for PR purposes) possible.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mike-cassidy/ci_22452234/cassidy-fairchilds-turn-pbs-american-experience-puts-silicon?source=rss

"With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly."
Gordon Moore 1929 -

[saturation]

The most innovative electronics, for the most part, in the USA is hugely driven by military needs.   Consider just the Internet and GPS, which were purely military at first.  The only reason you don't hear even more of the better stuff is it remains secret.