When basic researchers started working on semiconductors in the late nineteen thirties and on integrated circuits at the end of the nineteen fifties, they did not know that their work would change the lives of future generations. Very few people at that time recognized the significance of perhaps the most important invention of the century. Although historians have assigned the invention of integrated circuits to Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, in this book, the author argues that the group of inventors was much larger. This richly illustrated account is a personal recollection of the development of integrated circuits and personalities - such as Russell Ohl, Karl Lark-Horovitz, William Shockley, Carl Frosch, Lincoln Derick, Calvin Fuller, Kurt Lehovec, Jean Hoerni, Shelton Roberts, Jay Last, Issy Haas, Bob Norman, Dave Allison, Jim Null, Tom Longo, Bob Widlar, Frank Wanlass, Federico Fagin, and Dave Talbert. Here is the first comprehensive behind-the-scences account of the history of the integrated circuit, the microelectronics industry and the people closely involved in the development of the transistor and integrated circuit.

Prologue.- Research Organization: Bell Telephone Laboratories.- Grown Junction and Diffused Transistors.- Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories.- Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation - Subsidiary of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Company.- Driving the Company Out of Business.- Integrated Circuits outside Fairchild Semiconductor.- Linear Integrated Circuits: Pre-Widlar Era Prior to 1963.- Robert J. Widlar - The Genius, The Legend, The Bohemian.- National Semiconductor - A New Type of Semiconductor Company.- The MOS Transistor.- Epilogue.

performing ?rms were curtailed following the stock market decline and the subsequent economic slowdown of 2001 and 2002. The Federal Government was once the main source of the nation's R&D funds, funding as much as 66. 7 percent of all U. S. R&D in 1964. The Federal share ?rst fell below 50 percent in 1979, and after 1987 it fell steadily, dr- ping from 46. 3 percent in that year to 25. 1 percent in 2000 (the lowest it has ever been since 1953). Adjusting for in?ation, Federal support decreased 18 percent from 1987 to 2000, although in nominal terms, Federal support grew from $58. 5 billion to $66. 4 billion during that period. Growth in industrial funding generally outpaced growth in Federal support, leading to the decline in Federal support as a proportion of the total. Fig. 2. Doctorates awarded in Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics: 1995-2002 [Source: National Science Foundation NSF 04-303 (October 2003)] Figure 1 explains the most signi?cant change in the industry which occurred in the early sixties. The industry, with pressure from Wall Street, could not ?nance long-range and risky basic research. The objective of basic research is to gain more comprehensive knowledge or understanding of the subject under study without speci?c applications in mind. Basic research advances scienti?c knowledge but does not have speci?c immediate commercial objectives. Basic research can fail and often will not bring results in a short period of time.