California. Fairchild Semiconductors, with 12,000 employees, is fragmented. It was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (the man behind Moore’s Law), who had also left the company owned by William Shockley, one of the three inventors of the transistor. Noyce and Moore leave and found Integrated Electronics Corp., later abbreviated to Intel. Within a few years, 50 more semiconductor companies emerge in the area, which will become Silicon Valley.
