Crystal Fire #8

William Shockley was surpassed by others for promotion to head all research, so he left Bell Labs. Bell’s top managers felt he was most effective where he was. Other top physicists such as John Bardeen had complained of Shockley’s ham-handed management. Shockley lacked the broader organization skills for directing a wider variety of work. He sought positions at other businesses and as a university professor, but then decided to devote his efforts to start his own company in the semiconductor industry. He finally met with someone who was willing to back him for the $1 million he sought. This was Arnold Beckman, both a good scientist and a successful business man. He was the head of Beckman Instruments, a company that specialized in making analytical instruments, such as a pH meter, for controlling production processes.

Shockley flew Los Angeles and met with Beckman for a week to discuss and then form a business plan. Beckman wanted the new company to be in the LA area, but Shockley wanted it near San Francisco and Stanford University. The provost and dean of engineering at Stanford helped Shockley convince Beckman that being near Stanford would be the best place for recruiting employees and having contacts for getting business.

Shockley first tried to recruit people from Bell Labs, but wasn’t successful. He then sought recruits from other firms such as Motorola, Philco, Raytheon, and Sylvania. He also sought young PhDs at top schools like Berkeley, Cal Tech, and MIT. When Beckman announced the launch of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, there were only four Ph.D. scientists and engineers on board. As the facilities were being made for the laboratory, he recruited Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. Noyce and Moore would later became the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.

Beckman paid $25,000 to Western Electric to license patent rights in the transistor. Shockley’s contacts Bell Labs were helpful in gaining more info about production techniques. Still the going was tough. It was one thing to get methods working in the ultrahigh-technology environment of Bell Labs with its ample supply of first-rate scientists, engineers, and technicians and high-quality equipment. It was quite another to achieve the same results in the primitive surrounding of Shockley’s lab, even with the talent there.

In November, 1956 Shockley learned he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics along with Bardeen and Brattain. They all met in Stockholm to receive their award in December 1956. As 1957 began, his company was not doing well. It had been in operation more than a year, but was still struggling to produce anything for sale. Employee defections began. Beckman began to realize that Shockley was a brilliant physicist but a lousy business manager. Shockley devoted his efforts to developing one kind of transistor while Noyce, Moore, and others thought it was a waste of time. Several months later Noyce, Moore and six other of Shockley’s brightest recruits resigned to start their own company. They got financing from Fairchild Camera and Instruments and named their company Fairchild Semiconductor.