The fathers of Silicon Valley: the Traitorous Eight.
March 2nd, 2011 4 Comments »Thanks to a conversation with an EPFL colleague, I was recently reminded the early history of Silicon Valley. I knew about Shockley, Fairchild and the Traitorous Eight. I did not know Shockley had been funded by Beckman (thanks Andrea 
), that was the point of the recent conversation.
What is interesting is to have a look at the Traitorous 8 also. Their history (cf Wikipédia) is well-known, what may be less known is their background.
The next table gives the origin, education and age of the 8 traitors, the 8 engineers who left Shockley labs to found Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 (click on it to enlarge).
They can be considered as the real fathers of Silicon Valley. The famous poster entitled Silicon Valley Genealogy is certainly a convincing illustration of it as well as their Post-Fairchild activities.
The next image is extracted from the one above (left, mid-height level, corresponding to 1957).
A few comments:
- 5 were educated on the East Coast, 2 on the West Coast and 1 in Europe.
- Indeed, three were from Europe.
- 6 had a PhD (3 from MIT), all had a bachelor.
- They were between 28 and 34-year old in 1957.
Tags: Silicon Valley
April 5th, 2011 at 10:31 pm
http://teambusinessbuilderpro.com/ Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time
April 19th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
[...] On the top left, here are the famous Traitorous Eight, the founders of Fairchild in 1957 who can be considered as the fathers of Silicon Valley. Jean Hoerni was from Switzerland, Eugene Kleiner from Austria, and Victor Grinich’s parents from Croatia (he was born Grgunirovich). You may want to know more at http://www.startup-book.com/2011/03/02/the-fathers-of-silicon-valley-the-traitorous-eight. [...]
May 7th, 2011 at 9:23 am
Not to dismiss the accomplishments of the Fairchildren, but I believe that, if only because they started their company 19 years earlier than the Traitorous Eight, the title of “Founding Fathers of the Silicon Valley” is due to Hewlett and Packard. See http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/stanford-magazine-founding_fathers.shtml.
May 7th, 2011 at 9:31 am
Well you are not wrong, but HP was created in 1939 and nothing really happened in the following years whereas Fairchild was a an acceleration thanks to the semiconductor. But Terman at Stanford could be seen as a grandfather too. Thanks!
herve