The traitorous eight was a group of eight employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor. William Shockley had in 1956 recruited a group of young Ph.D. graduates with the goal to develop and produce new semiconductor devices. While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his management of the group was authoritarian and unpopular. This was accentuated by Shockley's research focus not proving fruitful. After the demand for Shockley to be replaced was rebuffed, the eight left to form their own company.
From left to right: Gordon Moore, C. Sheldon Roberts, Eugene Kleiner, Robert Noyce, Victor Grinich, Julius Blank, Jean Hoerni and Jay Last (1960)
Shockley in 1975
The first building of Fairchild Semiconductor, at 844 East Charleston Road, Palo Alto, California
The historic marker at the Fairchild building at which the "traitorous eight" set up shop and the first commercially practical integrated circuit was invented
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, later known as Shockley Transistor Corporation, was a pioneering semiconductor developer founded by William Shockley, and funded by Beckman Instruments, Inc., in 1955. It was the first high technology company in what came to be known as Silicon Valley to work on silicon-based semiconductor devices.
The original Shockley building at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California, was a produce market in 2006 and has since been demolished.
The 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, site of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, in Dec. 2017. The new project being completed here includes a display of sculptures of packaged semiconductors, including a 2N696 transistor, a Shockley 4-layer diode, and another diode, standing above the sidewalk (seen at the left here).
Facebook's building 391, at the site of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California; pre-dawn view from the Hyatt Centric Hotel
