The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce (1983) | Hacker News Reader

The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce (1983)

esquire.com

47 pointsgumby9 comments

It's a great piece but the unqualified attribution of credit for the 'invention' of the microprocessor to Ted Hoff without mention of the team that made it happen - (especially) Federico Faggin, Masatoshi Shima and Stan Mazor - is unfortunate, but seems consistent with Intel's handling of the issue at the time the article was written.

It's a magnificent piece of writing that chronicles a fantastic voyage. How did it come to be?

> In 1983, Esquire commissioned journalist Tom Wolfe to write a piece on Robert Noyce for its anniversary issue, which would profile 50 Americans who had a profound and positive impact on American life during Esquire’s 50 years of existence. The magazine featured other famous writer-subject pairings, a piece by Kurt Vonnegut on Jackson Pollock and another by Norman Mailer on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But Wolfe’s “The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce” would have a unique legacy. One historian called it “perhaps the most celebrated piece of journalism about Silicon Valley” and maintained more than 30 years after its publication that “it still stands as the most famous description of Intel and its singular corporate culture.”

https://newsroom.intel.com/articles/intel-50-tom-wolfes-tink...

Posted many times but not much commenting - I thought there had been a larger thread?

2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17212210

2017 (1 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14650795

2015 (1 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10092652

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8133479

The revised version "Robert Noyce and His Congregation" was also discussed, also not very much:

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8135553

How do you follow Tom Wolfe?

I'm tempted to say "In a van?" but actually I don't understand your question.

I'm tempted to say "with a ouija board."

More seriously, this article makes a strong argument in the affirmative for the second footnote in:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070333

namely, that Silicon Valley allows talent from all over the world "to join, to belong, really to be equal, not just legally equal, and, above everything, to share, to struggle, and to work under conditions of heroism for a common goal."

Hah, I was thinking that the article was such an excellent piece of writing by someone so prominent, commenting on it is like performing on stage after Elvis.

That article really does capture the origin of a lot of tech company culture well. Grove's books were required reading for managers at a couple of companies I was at. The article should be part of any CS syllabus to understand the culture that produced the tech we have today.

I get it now! Indeed.

Great BBC documentary about chip manufacturing from 1977:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ

Robert Noyce and Intel are featured (although IIRC Intel is never named). Noyce appears starting around 9 mins in, followed by a detailed look around the fab.

Was this the first and last time that Intel allowed cameras around their fabs? I'm pretty sure it would never be permitted today.

Also the first time Noyce appears he's flipping through chip masks for the 8080!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com