Thackray Arnold, Brock David C., Jones Rachel. Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley's Quiet Revolutionary

Basic Books, 2015. — 560 p. — ISBN 9780465055623, 0465055621.Our world today -- from the phone in your pocket to the car that you drive, the allure of social media to the strategy of the Pentagon -- has been shaped irrevocably by the technology of silicon transistors. Year after year, for half a century, these tiny switches have enabled ever-more startling capabilities. Their incredible proliferation has altered the course of human history as dramatically as any political or social revolution. At the heart of it all has been one quiet Californian: Gordon Moore.
At Fairchild Semiconductor, his seminal Silicon Valley startup, Moore -- a young chemist turned electronics entrepreneur -- had the defining insight: silicon transistors, and microchips made of them, could make electronics profoundly cheap and immensely powerful. Microchips could double in power, then redouble again in clockwork fashion. History has borne out this insight, which we now call "Moore's Law", and Moore himself, having recognized it, worked endlessly to realize his vision. With Moore's technological leadership at Fairchild and then at his second start-up, the Intel Corporation, the law has held for fifty years. The result is profound: from the days of enormous, clunky computers of limited capability to our new era, in which computers are placed everywhere from inside of our bodies to the surface of Mars.
Moore led nothing short of a revolution. In Moore's Law, Arnold Thackray, David C. Brock, and Rachel Jones give the authoritative account of Gordon Moore's life and his role in the development both of Silicon Valley and the transformative technologies developed there. Told by a team of writers with unparalleled access to Moore, his family, and his contemporaries, this is the human story of man and a career that have had almost superhuman effects. The history of twentieth-century technology is littered with overblown "revolutions." Moore's Law is essential reading for anyone seeking to learn what a real revolution looks like.Prelude
“This Is Shockley”
What Is Moore’s Law?
The Real Revolutionary
The Enigma
California Local
The Moores of Pescadero into the unknown
Eli Moore Hears the Call
California: Land of Opportunity
Santa Cruz, Entrepreneurship, and the Gold Rush
Pescadero Pioneers
Boom years and family senescence
Settling Down
A Sea Passage to Pescadero
Children of a New Era
Over the Top
Normalcy, Prohibition, and Lawful Life
Pescadero pastorale
Good Times in Bad Times
The Sins of the Fathers
Huntin’, Shootin’, and Fishin’
Walter: The Local Moore’s Law
School Days
Looking Back, Looking Forward
The chemistry of romance out of the back woods
Worlds Aborning
Electric Magic
Electronics Enters Ordinary Life
New Home, New Life
The Romance of Chemistry
Athletics and War
The Sheriff and the Blind Eye
Big Bangs
Ready to Move On
Boy meets Girl
San Jose State
Enter Betty Whitaker
Life on the Ranch
Growing Up
The Chemistry of Romance
Chemical apprentice Berkeley and the Big Game
Cloyne Court
Nobel Science
Rockets and Rose Bowls
Betty in Berkeley
Elite Aspirations
Two’s company
Life Choices
A Fresh Milieu
Tracking Down Badger
Luminous Personalities
Life Outside the Lab
Friends, Acquaintances, Losses
Research and Publication
Professor Moore?
Heading East
Science, Shockley, and silicon cold war
Missiles, Bombs, and Electronics
Meanwhile, at Home in Maryland...
Computers and Transistors, Ahoy!
Looking for Change
“Hello, This Is Shockley”
Silicon, Chemistry, and Bell Labs
Shockley semiconductor laboratory
Beckman, Shockley, and Affairs of the Heart
Enter Gordon
Complications Galore
Out of the Loop
Things Fall Apart
Where there’s a will...
Realization Dawns
The Die Is Cast
The Traitorous Eight
Launch start-up
Inventing Fairchild Semiconductor
Making the Mesa
Where’s the Boss?
Transistors, Texas, and Virtual Reality
The Call of the Valkyrie
Realizing the Product
Going for Broke
Thinking big
An All-Silicon Future
Particles and Possibilities
Defection and Reorganization
Men and Booze
Planar Takes Off
Gordon at Home
Emerging realities setting a frame
More Defense for the Dollar
A Silicon Valley?
New Directions and Dynamics
Moore’s Law in Prospect
The Changing Face of Electronics
Learning to lead
Vectoring a Lab
The Last Entry in the Ledger
The Two Worlds of Fairchild Semiconductor
Advances and Setbacks
The Promise and Perils of MOS
Renewed Direction
The microchip
From Proof to Persuasion
Moore’s Law
Failure and Frustrations
Making Strides
Creative Destruction
Rescue and Meltdown
The invention of Intel always in a hurry
The Game Plan
Obfuscations and Resources
Strategy, People, and Premises
“Goldilocks” and a Christmas Bet
Into production
Pinholes and Progress
The DRAM and the Microprocessor
Interlude: Keeping Close
A going concern
Funding Success
Second Sourcing
A Race for Glory
The Blind Eye: Grove, Graham, and Gelbach
Vindication: The IPO
The real revolution Silicon Valley, USA
Convergence and Competition
Refining the Leadership
The Challenges of Growth
The $15 Million Wristwatch
Transistors by the Trillion
A New Sparta?
Staying Grounded
The revolution takes hold
War, Weapons, and Winning
Microprocessor Rising
Where Lies the Future?
Embargo, Interdependence, and Revolution
Crisis, Cosmic Rays, and Computers
Loosening Ties
Making Hay, Dodging Rain
The great cost-reduction machine
Settling in
Decision Time
Moore’s Law Revisited
Moore’s Boom
Chips with Everything
Challenges, changes, continuities
Managing the Machine
Fifteen New Intels?
Mr. Reliable
Betty; or, The Noncorporate Wife
Fathers and Sons
Home Computers?
100 Trillion Transistors?
Revolution, sturm und drang
Rising waves
Apples and Opportunities
Family Values
Priming the Printing Press
Killing with Quality: Japan
From memory to microprocessors and Microsoft
CEO and Chairman
Crushing and Crashing
Electronic Reality, 1980
In the Mouth of the Whale
Self-Help: The Family Foundation
Treadmill, Tracking, and Transformation
The DRAM Decision
Sole Sourcing
Wintel to the Rescue
Onward and outward
Chairman of the board
Microprocessors and the PC
Risks and RISC
Electronics Rule
Road Maps
Losses and Gains
Changing Scenes
Chairman emeritus
“Intel Inside”
Moore’s Law and the Silicocene
Exeunt Gordon
Public, private, philanthropic
California to Hawaii
Exponential Assets
Serious Giving
Making a Difference
Cracks Appear
Family Business
Whose Foundation?
Coda
A legacy aborning
Family Man
Philanthropy and Ambiguity
Transistors Triumphant
The Metronome of Moore’s Law
All Good Exponentials End
Essay on sources