Biography|Robert Noyce — 844 East Charleston Road, Where Eight Men Left Shockley

People treat Silicon Valley's first chip company as a Santa Clara campus with a logo already on the door.

The first shop was this rented building at 844 East Charleston Road in Palo Alto.

On 1 October 1957 Fairchild Semiconductor opened here after eight engineers resigned from William Shockley's lab, 1.4 miles away at 391 San Antonio Road.

The group was Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Sheldon Roberts, and Robert Noyce.

Shockley called them the traitorous eight.

Sherman Fairchild's camera company in Syosset put up the money after Noyce argued that silicon transistors could be made from sand and a few fine wires if the process was right.

Noyce, twenty-nine, became the laboratory's public leader.

The plan that autumn was not yet a chip.

It was a double-diffused silicon junction transistor the team had wanted to ship under Shockley and had not been allowed to finish.

Sputnik went up the same month the lights went on in this building.

California later marked the lot as Historical Landmark 1000 for the integrated circuit Noyce designed here in 1959.

The original industrial shed still stands.

A granite pair of plaques sits at the sidewalk.

A visitor finds a commercial tenant, not a museum, and the plaques are the only sign.

Photo: Fairchild Semiconductor building, 844 East Charleston Road, Palo Alto. Copyrighted free use, via Wikimedia Commons.