The Fairchild Notebooks
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Top Ten Historically Important Notebooks http://www.toptenz.net/ top-10-historically-important-notebooks.php Da Vinci Einstein The Fairchild Semiconductor Notebooks Edison Fairchild Business Chronology 1957 – FSC founded (September) 1957 – Sputnik launches Space Race (October) 1958 – First transistor delivered to IBM 1958 – Autonetics Minuteman orders 1959 – Noyce promoted to GM 1959 – FSC acquired by Fairchild Camera 1962 – Micrologic Apollo computer orders 1963 – Hong Kong off-shore assembly plant 1968 – Noyce resigns, Hogan arrives 1978 – Sales peaked at $383M, sold to Schlumberger 1987 – Acquired by National Semiconductor 1997 – Spun out of National (2014 sales $1.4B) More than 125 semiconductor start-ups led by FSC alumni thru 1987 Fairchild Technical Highlights 1957 – Planar process disclosed (Hoerni*) 1958 – Double-diffused transistor (Moore*) 1959 – Planar transistor (Hoerni), Planar IC disclosed(Noyce*) 1960 – Planar IC (Last) 1961 – Au transistor (Hoerni*), Memory cell (Norman*), TTL (Beeson) 1962 – CMOS (Wanlass*), Band-gap voltage reference (Hilbiber*) 1965 – Dual-Inline-Package (Rice, Rogers), Moore’s “Law” 1967 – MOS stability (Deal, Grove*, Snow*) 1968 – Silicon-gate MOS (Faggin*, Klein*) 1968 – MOS DRAM - 256-bit (Boysel) 1971 – Isoplanar process (Peltzer*) 1976 – Video game ROM cartridge (Lawson) * Patent award based on this work Fairchild Semiconductor Patent & Laboratory Notebooks Fairchild National TI CHM Curating the Fairchild Notebooks • Over 3,000 issued between 1957 and 1986 • 1,334 notebooks donated to CHM in July 2012 • Over 200,000 handwritten pages • Contents: Illustrations, calculations, plots, graphs, tables, photographs, wafers, packages, and mementos • Selected the “most significant” 200 volumes • Triaged by author’s notoriety, patents, & publications • Identified those most in need of restoration • Reviewed, wrote abstracts, and author bios • Created public online database at: www.computerhistory.org/collections/fairchild/ CHM Online Fairchild Notebook Resource http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/fairchild/ Robert Noyce Notebook Artifact Details http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/ catalog/102722911 Noyce Notebook, January 23, 1959 http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/03/102722911-05-01-acc.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Tea4FzK7k&feature=youtu.be The story of how Jean Hoerni invented the Planar process, saved Fairchild and enabled the IC Jean Hoerni #3 Gordon Moore #6 Robert Noyce #8 (1924 – 1997) (1924) (1927 – 1990) As told by three notebooks Jean Hoerni (# 3) Co-founder Planar process invention* disclosure, December 1, 1957 * Patent 3025589, “Method of manufacturing semiconductor devices” Gordon Moore (# 6) Co-founder “Tapping Test” mesa transistor failure analysis July 3, 1959 Robert Noyce (# 8) Co-founder Planar IC Invention* disclosure January 23, 1959 *Patent 2981877, “Semiconductor device-and-lead structure.” Some interesting notebook entries • Jay Last (# 5) • Sheldon Roberts (# 7) • C. T. Sah (# 17) • Sam Fok (# 126) • Robert Beeson (# 146) • David Hilbiber (# 164) • Frank Wanlass (# 239) • Andrew Grove (# 413) • Maija Sklar (# 425) • Helen Bonfadini (Lab) • Herbert Kroemer (# 490) Jay Last (# 5) Co-founder Phase 1 Micrologic “String & sealing wax” January 1960 Sheldon Roberts (# 7) Co-founder Plans for crystal growing October 21, 1957 C. T. Sah (# 17) Head, Physics & Technology Section Tunnel Diode Experiments July 1, 1959 Sam Fok (# 126) Member Technical Staff First Planar IC operation May 12, 1960 R. H. Beeson (# 146) Applications Engineer Independently invented* TTL March 9, 1961 * J. Buie filed patent Sept 8, 1961. T. Longo, Sylvania heard Beeson paper February 1962 David Hilbiber (# 164) Engineer, Linear IC Group Voltage reference element invention* April 3, 1962 * Patent 3271660 “Reference voltage source” Frank Wanlass (# 239) Member Technical Staff CMOS invention* disclosure October 8, 1962 * Patent 3356858 “Low stand-by power complementary field effect circuitry” Andy Grove (# 413) Member Technical Staff “Characteristics of the surface-state charge (QSS) of thermally oxidized silicon” fifth most frequently cited paper in the history of the Electrochemical Society with Deal, Sklar & Snow (1967) Helen Bonfadini - Lab Technician R. Norman, Early IC memory cell sketches. Patent 3562721, "Solid state switching and memory apparatus." 1966 Herbert Kroemer (# 239) Head, New Phenomena Section 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics "for semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed and optoelectronics." The Fairchild Notebooks • Every book tells a story. Collectively, they tell the history of a generation that changed the world. • An extraordinary resource that has been described as “The Founding Documents of Silicon Valley” • This hand-crafted documentation of technology history will never be duplicated • Any info on the 1700 plus volumes not received will be appreciated - especially Moore #5 (at Intel in 2005?) that covered the “Law” period 1964-65. [Moore’sLaw@50] • What jewels are hidden in the other 1,134 books that I did not review? Summer 2015: Tuesday – Sunday 10 AM – 5 PM (Open Friday until 9 PM) .