A new documentary rolls back the years to 1957 and the amazing
but little-told story of the "traitorous eight" and how they
left one of the first semiconductor companies to found the first
startup of the computer age - Fairchild Semiconductor. This is a
story that wouldn't be out of place in a high power period piece
like Mad Men. In 1957 we were still figuring out how to make
transistors that didn't look like Rube Goldberg machines.
Fairchild managed to create the first flat or planar transistor
and while this might just seem to be to do with packaging it was
the start of the technology need to create the silicon chip and
eventually the microprocessor. Although the first microchip was
made at Fairchild, a group of engineers grew discontented with
the situation and broke away to form a small startup called
"Intel" - wonder whatever happened to that.... Silicon Valley
premieres February 19, 2013 on PBS. "the traitorous eight" sat
below the Fairchild logo Kenneth Appel (1932-2013) together with
Wolfgang Haken,