#TodayInHistory Intel was founded on this date in 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, both from Fairchild Semiconductors and later joined by Andy Grove, who would become one of it's most prominent CEOs, it would grow to become one of the giants of the Tech World.

Interesting aspect, of the 3 founders of Intel, only Robert Noyce was purely into Physics, Gordon Moore was a chemist, wile Andy Grove was a chemical engineer. Noyce also invented the IC with Jack Kilby, and Arthur Rock was the one who helped em find investors.

Gordon Moore was a Phd in Chemistry from CalTech, and he joined his fellow alumnus William Shockley at Shockley Semiconductors , before becoming part of the Traitorous 8 who left the company, thanks to Shockley's erratic and whimsical behavior.

The Traitorous 8 is the name given to a group of 8 employees who left Shockley Semiconductors, to found Fairchild. Shockley was a Nobel Prize winning physicist, but highly erratic and his rather whimsical behavior, turned off the employees working under him.

Gordon Moore was one of the Traitorous 8, along with Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Sheldon Roberts. Hoerni and Roberts along with Jay Last founded Amelco now Teledyne, Eugene Kleiner became one of Silicon Valley's leading VCs.

Gordon Moore also came up with the Moore's Law at Fairchild, where he predicted that the number of components in an Integrated Circuit would keep doubling every year for the next 10 years. And this in turn led to miniaturization in tech.

Robert Noyce was the co inventor of the Integrated Circuit with Jack Kilby, which fuelled the PC revolution, and also gave Silicon Valley it's name. Noyce was from Iowa, graduated from MIT, worked for some time at Philco, before joining Shockley, where he was part of T8.

In a sense Intel, was the result of 3 great minds, each different in their own way, but all critical to the company's success.
Noyce was more the visionary and tech evangelist.
Moore was the hard core techie kind.

In fact Robert Noyce bought in a more different corporate culture, treating employees as part of family, a hands on management style, less structured working environment, declined executive perks, no exclusive cabins, that in a way became Silicon Valley's culture to.

The 3rd Intel guy, Andrew Grove, was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, who fled the country's communist regime, real name was Andras Grof. His father was arrested by the Nazis when he was just 8, and taken to a labor camp. He fled Hungary after the failure of the 1956 Revolution.

In a way Andy Grove's is an inspiring story, fled Hungary when he as 20, barely able to speak English, later made his way to the US. In his own words
"By the time I was 20, I had been through Nazi occupation, Red Army occupying Budapest, aborted 1956 Revolution"

Like many other immigrants, Andy Grove arrived in US with little money, did odd jobs to support himself, his wife Eva was another refugee, and he managed to graduate in Chem Engg from City College, NY. Yeah typical Kane and Abel kinda story.

Grove was with Fairchild for some time as a researcher, later became Asst Director of Development there. Familiar with ICs, he later wrote a college textbook Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices. He also got his fellow Hungarian Leslie Vadasz to join with him in Intel.

Intel was not the original name actually, initially suggested MoorNoyce, ala HP, but was rejected, as was HomoPhone, but again rejected as it meant more noise. Founde as NM Electronics, but changed to Intel which meant Integrated Electronics.

Incidentally just a year after Intel, Jerry Sanders founded AMD in May, 1969. He too like Moore and Noyce was from Fairchild, which in a way was an incubator of sorts for all aspiring entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. AMD later became Intel's chief rival in microprocessors.

Intel's main target was the semiconductor memory market, which then was replacing the magnetic core memory used in RAMs. Their first product was the Schottky transistor, that was nearly twice as fast as the diode implementations by Fairchild.

Intel 4004 was their first commercially available microprocessor, in 1971, made possible by use of Silicon Gate technology, that was designed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild, , as well as the first microcomputer in 1972, though DRAM chips dominated their business.

However increasing competition from Japanese semiconductor makers, meant Intel's DRAM chips did not have the same profitability like before. Around the same time growth of IBM PC convinced Moore, that it would be better to focus on microprocessors primarily.

The development of the Microprocessor in 1971, was a major breakthrough in the Tech world. What it essentially did was to miniaturize the CPU, and ensure much smaller machines could do the same function at higher speeds, it was a revolution that laid foundation for PCs.

The 80s saw Intel zooming ahead, with it's position of leading microprocessor supplier to IBM, as well as other PC makers. A decade of rapid growth, as the primary microprocessor supplier to the PC industry, and in 1987 Andy Grove took over after Moore retired.

Intel 8080, the first general purpose microprocessor featuring 4500 transistors, in 1974, kickstarted PC development, while the Intel MCS-48 series were the first microcontrollers that combined CPU, memory, I/O.

16 bit Intel 286 Microprocessor in 1982, featuring around 14,000 transistors, was built into many PCs and it launched the CHMOS technology in 1983, that improved chip performance.

The iconic Pentium processor was launched in 1993 with 3.1 million transistors, initial speeds of 60 MHz, was later followed by Pentium Pro in 1995 for 32 bit workstations. And the Pentium MMX in 1996.