Bob Noyce Concepts

The Big Score

by Michael S. Malone · 20 Jul 2021

narratives, but I was there. I know how the air smelled when half the Valley was still covered in blooming fruit trees. I can remember Bob Noyce’s baritone voice and what it was like to shake David Packard’s enormous hand, to see little Steve Jobs on my elementary school playground

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out to recruit the only holdout at Shockley Labs, the only member of the original eight who seemed to exhibit characteristics of a budding leader, Bob Noyce. It didn’t take much effort. Noyce, Shockley’s golden boy, was as disenchanted as the rest. The eight soon submitted their resignation en masse

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would be up to Fairchild now to turn these plot ingredients into the stuff of an epic. Profile St. Bob – Robert Noyce The canonization of Bob Noyce began long before Esquire magazine hired that chronicler of cultural icons Tom Wolfe to profile the Silicon Valley pioneer for the special “50 Who Made

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now one of Noyce’s partners, volcanic Andy Grove, is earning at least as much attention with his theories of “high-output management.” But perhaps Bob Noyce wants it that way; one suspects that another part of him thrills at every new burst of publicity and bristles when he is passed over

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the crowded life of big cities. In reality, when commentators speak of the heartland roots of Silicon Valley’s leaders, they are speaking specifically of Bob Noyce, because his childhood seems to capture the essential schizophrenia between wild ambition and sober engineering conservatism that is at the center not only of Noyce

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were his two grandfathers). Like most small-town ministers, the senior Noyce was perpetually on the move to new congregations, his family in tow. When Bob Noyce was six weeks old, just enough to travel, his family moved the length of the state, to the southwestern corner and the town of Atlantic

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, in 1854 as his own version of a New Eden. Grinnell, a stiff, Republican, and religious town leavened only slightly by college life, would become Bob Noyce’s first—and perhaps only—real home, the place he would credit for his eventual success and on which he would rain some of the

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gild of that success in later years. Being a Congregational center, Grinnell was home to much of that sect’s bureaucracy for the state. Bob Noyce’s father had proved himself an able preacher and was awarded the associate superintendency of the Iowa Conference Congregational Churches, headquartered at Grinnell College. It

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physics department and decided that this was where he wanted to go to school. Remarkably, there was almost no better place in the country for Bob Noyce to have been at that time. His physics professor, Grant Gale, had been in contact with John Bardeen (a childhood friend of Gale’s wife

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) and had obtained from him two of the first transistors, which he studied with his students, including Bob Noyce. This was in 1948. In the competitive Noyce family, doing well in school wasn’t enough to stand out among overachieving older siblings. But Bob

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a secure and comfortable place to be. I came out of it with the feeling that it was a terribly boring place to be.” The Bob Noyce that returned to Grinnell in early 1949 was a mature, professional man with a good idea of where he was going. The first priority was

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exploit—well, maybe ‘exploit’ is the wrong way to put it—but I saw it as something that would be fun to work with.” So Bob Noyce, now 22, decided to pursue the study of solid state physics at the premier school of science on the East Coast, MIT. He enrolled in

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to hop around to different projects. For that right, Noyce was willing to make some sacrifices (the Philco offer was the lowest of the group). Bob Noyce knew always to choose God over Mammon, and he was content to make the smaller salary at Philco in exchange for the greater opportunity. (“My

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’t seem to get anything out the door, finally blew the place apart. It was years before Shockley forgave any of the Traitorous Eight, particularly Bob Noyce, who had been Shockley’s favorite. Noyce says, “I remember his wife talking to Betty, my first wife, when we were all leaving and saying

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of decency. The preacher’s boy who had wanted out from under the responsibilities of that title now naturally reassumed it. It was important for Bob Noyce to be liked, which paralyzed his ability to fire people or reposition them downward, even when the company and those who worked for it were

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his egotistical and recalcitrant generals under control and coordinated as much as possible toward achieving the final objective. And, like most men in that position, Bob Noyce has an element of detachment in his personality. Many men admire him, but few seem to really know him. There is an element of reserve

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man, a joy for interviewees, a man whose apparent humility puts even the lowliest subordinate at ease. But there is a deeper, harder part to Bob Noyce that when the pressure is on comes to the fore with an unblinking pair of eyes and a clear, cold voice of command. This other

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part of Bob Noyce comes from the preacher’s boy who learned not to become too attached to a home or a school or friends, because a letter in

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experience, thrown into the role of chief executive of one of the most important firms of the postwar world. There is a third side to Bob Noyce, one that belies the almost preternatural calmness that seems to hover about him. Scuba diving isn’t the only Noyce leisure-time activity that gives

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the same spirit that led to the stolen-pig caper wasn’t purged by nine months of staring at actuarial tables. Instead of growing easier, Bob Noyce’s life in recent years has seemed to grow more complex. He has pulled away from the day-to-day activities of his new firm

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bought in Los Altos in 1960 that he subsequently improved with a tennis court and a magnificent pool with cascading rapids surrounded by exquisite landscaping. Bob Noyce, who said all he wanted out of his first job was a challenge and two pairs of his own shoes, is now enormously wealthy: He

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out—continue being the spokesman for the semiconductor industry, keep a hand in at Intel, sit on the board of a new company or two—Bob Noyce knows that he has come as close to immortality as any engineer. He played a pivotal part in the creation of the milestone invention of

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jaws drop, it is interesting to note that the average age for the entire executive staff of Fairchild in 1963 was under 30. Even headman Bob Noyce was just 36, 30 when he helped found the firm. There is remarkably little permanent record of life at Fairchild in the fifties and sixties

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at Bell Labs, had never been commercially feasible. Making it so would be the company’s first goal. Jobs were divvied up according to skills. Bob Noyce and Jay Last took photolithography; Eugene Kleiner, the ex-professor, took administration; Gordon Moore and Jean Hoerni, the two big research guns, took on the

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a company, with the blessings of Big Blue itself. It was the beginning of a long relationship between IBM and Silicon Valley, and particularly with Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore. Fairchild next proceeded to do what every high-tech firm has done before and since: reduce the cost of producing existing products

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’s sales, manufacturing, and research departments might be sublimated to a revitalized corporate esprit de corps. But it wasn’t to be. Within a year, Bob Noyce was promoted to Fairchild group vice president and given added executive responsibilities over instrumentation, graphics products, and several other divisions in addition to semiconductors. Bay

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to make the best use of his strengths while minimizing his weaknesses. Now they were being thrust into roles where just the opposite was true. Bob Noyce, for example, didn’t seem to enjoy running a very large company, and his natural bent toward research had been at the cost of Fairchild

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of winning them over. He had vision.” Noyce alone could keep Fairchild together. No matter what the frustration felt in a particular department, everyone worshipped Bob Noyce. But now Noyce, the glue holding the entrepreneurial spirits of Fairchild from flying apart, was gone, kicked upstairs to a corporate job. And Sporck was

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time was that Sanders had actually done everything he could to keep Kvamme, the only émigré from the marketing department around. Says Sanders, “I enlisted Bob Noyce’s aid, but he was no help; he called him the wrong name. He called him Cloyd, for Cloyd Marvin. “Now don’t get me

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wrong, we couldn’t have turned Floyd Kvamme around if Bob Noyce had legally adopted him. But it was just a little thing I remembered, because I was so sales-oriented, and, you know, we were telling

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Man, Thief The explosion of Fairchild threw some of its top talents farther than others. Some, like Charlie Sporck, landed in existing, if faltering, companies. Bob Noyce had a sterling reputation and investors crawled all over themselves lining up to give him money. Jerry Sanders, still a relatively unknown quantity, had to

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had won the race. * * * Given the reputation and the personalities of its founders, Intel Corp.’s birth was far more geneteel than National’s. Recalls Bob Noyce: I remember standing out in my front yard talking to Gordon [Moore] and telling him that I was resigning [from Fairchild]. He was probably the

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in this field. And that sort of planted the seeds in our minds that it might make sense to do something together. A month after Bob Noyce resigned as head of Fairchild, Moore also quit the company as its chief technical wizard, bringing with him an almost unknown applications expert from Hungary

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.” Hogan is not being derogatory but respectful, even a little awestruck, about Grove’s single-minded purposefulness. As Marshall Cox said, “You have to understand. Bob [Noyce] really has to be a nice guy. It’s important for him to be liked. So somebody has to kick ass and take names. And

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that reality. In fact, so special is the Intel personality that privately, many of the company’s own leaders will admit that were a young Bob Noyce to apply for a job at Intel, he probably would not fit in. The fact that one of the greatest men Silicon Valley has produced

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the many other Fairchild spinoffs in the late sixties, had it not been for the unknown and always unpredictable factor of Jerry Sanders. Sanders is Bob Noyce without the Midwestern repressiveness, Sporck with style. Rather than avoiding the trappings of success or pretending to hate it, Sanders revels in it, flaunts it

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else, he’d stop over and have some fun in Las Vegas. But Fairchild was more than Sanders had anticipated, particularly its two top men: Bob Noyce, general manager, and Tom Bay, director of marketing. “They were quite impressive guys.” After years of looking, Sanders had at last found his role models

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. The same management shuffle that promoted Valentine had also made other changes on executive row. In particular, Sanders’s two mentors were made increasingly inaccessible: Bob Noyce, in recognition of Fairchild Semiconductor’s preponderant contributions to the parent company’s profits, was named a group vice president, responsible for several divisions. It

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, he quickly hired Don Valentine. Sanders had already settled into his new position at Fairchild when, just a few months after Sporck’s departure, founders Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore announced that they were quitting to found Intel. Sporck’s resignation had been a shock, primarily because such a move had so

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know the questions to ask. You know, they were looking for xerography and I didn’t have xerography, so they’d go back to sleep… Bob Noyce always said that it took [Intel] five minutes to raise $5 million—well, it took me 5 million minutes to raise five dollars. It was

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as a marketing man, because with McKenna came legitimacy. McKenna went back to the early days of the industry. He had dinner with people like Bob Noyce and Andy Grove. If you were accepted into McKenna’s select stable of clients, you were suddenly no longer just some asshole kid on a

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trip. It begins in Los Altos, at the base of the hills owned by the Valley’s wealthiest. Dave Packard lives up there. So did Bob Noyce. At Mom’s ice cream parlor, a Valley landmark at the avenue’s source, one can sit in the window eating an ice cream cone

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another from De Anza Junior College, in another from Fremont High and the once-graffitied wall on Fremont Avenue, and in another from the house Bob Noyce lived in when he first came to Silicon Valley. It may be the most desolate spot in the Valley. The only activity is the thousands

The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson · 6 Oct 2014 · 720pp · 197,129 words

of the most famous of all Grinnell College’s alumni, Gary Cooper. With his strong face, his athlete’s build, and the Gary Cooper manner, Bob Noyce projected what psychologists call the halo effect. People with the halo effect seem to know exactly what they’re doing and, moreover, make you want

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professional, at least during their years at ARPA.46 Roberts was not as genial as Licklider, nor as extroverted as Taylor, nor as congregational as Bob Noyce. “Larry’s a cold fish,” according to Taylor.47 Instead he had a trait that was just as useful in promoting collaborative creativity and managing

The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution

by T. R. Reid · 18 Dec 2007 · 293pp · 91,110 words

that passes for winter in the sunny valley of San Francisco Bay that is known today, because of that idea, as Silicon Valley. Unlike Kilby, Bob Noyce did not have to check with the boss when he got an idea; at the age of thirty-one, Noyce was the boss. It was

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other mechanical devices. The group was long on mechanical talent and short on managerial skills, but one of the founders turned out to have both: Bob Noyce. A slender, square-jawed man who exuded the easy self-assurance of a jet pilot, Noyce had an unbounded curiosity that led him, at one

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get to that wonderfully promising new stretch of sea. The future was within sight, tempting, tantalizing, but out of reach. Just so for Jack Kilby, Bob Noyce, and their colleagues. A vast new electronic world was right there on the blueprints, but impossible to achieve. And so physicists and electronics engineers embarked

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decreased computing power. It was the technological equivalent of Catch-22: the tyranny of numbers. “It was a situation where, quite clearly, size dictated performance,” Bob Noyce recalled. “Not just performance, in the sense of limiting computing speed, but the size and complexity of electronic circuits dictated cost, reliability, utility.” “The things

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on to other things. That lost airplane had prompted him to build a radio control unit for his next model. Radio proved so interesting that Bob Noyce and a buddy put together a pair of crude transceivers to send messages back and forth. Neither boy obtained a radio operator’s license, making

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even more successful as an entrepreneur—indeed, he set the mold for that classic turn-of-the-century phenomenon, the high-tech multimillionaire. It was Bob Noyce who first demonstrated to the denizens of Silicon Valley that a clever engineer could turn his technical talent into boundless wealth. By 1990, estimates of

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you could call it a relaxed atmosphere. A confident environment, but not a relaxed one.” A confident, but rarely relaxed, high achiever—that description fit Bob Noyce perfectly. One of Noyce’s acolytes at Intel, Andrew Grove, who took over as chairman of the firm in the 1990s, offered a somewhat more

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he knew from the first that physics and math would be his major interests. Not his only interests, of course—that was not the way Bob Noyce lived. He was the star diver on Grinnell’s swimming team, he sang in choral groups, played oboe in a band, and had a continuing

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circuit—a basic “adder” circuit that would add two numbers—realized in integrated form. Six months after Jack Kilby had arrived at the monolithic idea, Bob Noyce sailed into the same port. Kilby’s journey had been slightly quicker, but the use of the planar process made the Noyce route somewhat more

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integrated semiconductor circuit that would overcome the tyranny of numbers. There was, in fact, a germ of truth in this report; just five days earlier, Bob Noyce, in his office at Fairchild, had scratched his first sketchy concept of the monolithic idea in his notebook. But the rumor that reached Dallas had

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at Fairchild Semiconductor took their sweet time at first about developing the monolithic idea into a practical integrated circuit. It was nearly two months after Bob Noyce had set down the basic concept in his notebook before Fairchild started working on the idea; another four months passed before Noyce got around to

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people. Both were men who got more pleasure from the sheer joy of inventing than from public acclaim for their inventions. Both Jack Kilby and Bob Noyce were far more comfortable at the lab table, working out some technical problem, than they were at the head table of some gala banquet held

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, the Japanese version of the Nobel Prize (in 1993) and then the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 2000). On both occasions, Kilby pointed out that “Bob Noyce of Fairchild developed a similar idea, along with a practical means of manufacturing it.” So the praise as well as the profit for this groundbreaking

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up together at the start of the twentieth century. “The synergy between a new component and a new application generated an explosive growth for both,” Bob Noyce wrote in a retrospective article two decades after the monolithic idea was born. “The computer was the ideal market . . . a much larger market than could

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wagon that could go 500 miles per hour—and cost $150,000. Who needed it? “There was the natural reluctance to commit to something new,” Bob Noyce recalled later. “And added to that you had a price that was basically uneconomical. So at first the traditional electronics customers just weren’t buying

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” because the scientists thought they could find something in the basic structure of the molecule that would serve the function of traditional resistors, diodes, etc. Bob Noyce brushed up against molecular electronics early in his career. “The idea of it was, well, you lay down a layer of this and a layer

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, in large part, the story of imaginative and aggressive leadership by the U.S. Air Force.”) Events followed a different course at Fairchild, largely because Bob Noyce had different ideas about Pentagon-funded research. Noyce had worked on some defense research and development projects when he was a young engineer at Philco

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defective transistor could render the entire integrated circuit worthless. “A single speck of dust is huge compared to the components in a high-density circuit,” Bob Noyce said. “One dust particle will easily kill a whole circuit. So you’ve got to produce the thing in a room that is absolutely free

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evening. . . . We could pass it down through several generations without any requirement for repair.” Another interested party who found this history hard to believe was Bob Noyce. “Progress has been astonishing, even to those of us who have been intimately engaged in the evolving technology,” he wrote. An individual integrated circuit on

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? Most of the industry looked at those figures and decided that the wisest course would be to forget memory. A pair of engineers at Fairchild—Bob Noyce and his friend Gordon Moore—looked at the same numbers and decided to give it a try. By 1968, the men who had formed Fairchild

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fired within six months. To the “Fairchildren” out in California, it seemed obvious that the right man to lead the corporation was their own leader, Bob Noyce. But when this suggestion was passed to the corporate board, the directors could not bring themselves to entrust their established and traditional corporation to a

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calculators but could find no engineers in Japan capable of designing the complex set of integrated circuits the machines would require. Busicom sought help—from Bob Noyce, who was still putting together his new company, Intel. The Japanese signed a contract with Intel calling for the design and production of twelve interlinked

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thousandth of a thousandth of a second? Computer engineers, practical types not often given to metaphysical speculation, don’t even try. They just become, as Bob Noyce said, “reconciled” to the notion that their machines work at unthinkably high speeds. The inconceivable speed of operation comes about because the “moving parts” of

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recently, China) borrowed the technology and then swept into the American market. The American semiconductor industry, during the first booming decade after Jack Kilby and Bob Noyce hit upon the monolithic idea, could safely look upon these developments in consumer electronics as irrelevant. In chips, the American pioneers had an enormous technological

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Robert N. Noyce. In the first edition of this book, this chapter came to an end at that unhappy juncture for the American semiconductor industry. Bob Noyce’s emergence as spokesman for the industry came at a time of desperation among semiconductor firms. There was a feeling, by 1985 or so, that

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logic chips. It was a quota system, pure and simple. But it gave the U.S. industry some breathing space and a chance to rebuild. Bob Noyce, however, was never really comfortable with this protectionist response to the industry’s problems, or with his role in bringing it about. Ever since his

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,” he said. “We need to get back to the leading edge of design, and we need to get better at manufacturing.” Thus it was that Bob Noyce became the chief architect, and the first CEO, of an industry-wide consortium called Sematech (a name carved out of semiconductor technology). To induce the

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, of “Japanese triumph and American failure.” But Fallows and his fellow chroniclers of American decline had not counted on the formidable talents and energy of Bob Noyce. Traveling the country, hectoring his colleagues, constantly pushing researchers, engineers, and corporate chairmen to work harder and faster, Noyce spent four hard years driving the

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global market share. While the American industry marched forward into the broad, sunlit uplands of world leadership, though, there was one shadow over the achievement. Bob Noyce, the man who was probably more responsible for the U.S. renaissance than anyone else, was not there to see it. 11 THE PATRIARCHS Robert

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becoming more and more uncomfortable. Fairchild’s directors wanted to run the new profit center their way, and this was something quite removed from what Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore had in mind. The two technologists were, as Noyce put it, “comfortable with risk,” be it technical or financial. The generic managers

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junior executives of neighboring companies far less successful than Intel routinely rode their limousines to San Francisco for lavish expense-account lunches at exorbitant bistros, Bob Noyce’s routine lunchroom was the Intel cafeteria. “The potato salad’s pretty good,” he told me over his tray. All of which was a direct

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most famous citizen. “In Silicon Valley, all of us wanted to work for Dave Packard [of Hewlett-Packard], but all of us wanted to be Bob Noyce.” The combination of Noyce’s vigorous athletic life, his far-flung personal interests, and his management work at Intel would have been sufficient to fill

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staged a mini-revolt. They threw out the list of candidates and turned to the man who had been the obvious choice from the beginning: Bob Noyce. At Sematech, Noyce turned himself into an expert on the production end of the chip business—the incredibly precise photolithographic machinery that “prints” wires less

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Valley would no longer have to crawl to Congress begging for protection from foreign competition. The goal was still some ways off when I saw Bob Noyce in the spring of 1990. He was friendly but intense, as usual, smoking like mad and talking at his normal super-fast pace. But he

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their own. So I think we’re going to get there.” When the U.S. semiconductor industry did get there, though, just two years later, Bob Noyce was not around to see it. On a Sunday morning in June 1990, he got up early at the house in Austin and dove into

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telephone and the automobile. And unlike many modern inventions, we know exactly who gave it to us. But in the microelectronic age, Jack Kilby and Bob Noyce symbolize, if anything, only the modern lack of interest in the humans behind the machines. Barely one American in ten thousand could name the two

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who had ever heard of him until he showed up in People magazine as “the richest man in the world”? A Time magazine story about Bob Noyce shortly before his death focused on his investment earnings and described him as a “financial genie”—a classic case of missing the real point. The

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work and begin proselytizing for political causes. And so, in an era when everybody is supposed to be famous for fifteen minutes, Jack Kilby and Bob Noyce have never come into their allotted quarter hour. There have been occasional stories about them in newspapers and magazines, particularly in the local media of

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more poignant moments of the week came in the lobby of Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, when Jack spotted another acquaintance from years back: Gordon Moore. Bob Noyce’s engineering and entrepreneurial colleague, the man who was on the receiving end when Noyce had first enunciated the monolithic idea forty-one years earlier

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decided to attend. “I did it for my friend,” Moore said. “The Nobel Prize for the integrated circuit would have been shared by my colleague Bob Noyce if he were alive. I thought I should come so that Bob would have a presence when his invention was honored.” Other than showing up

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tyranny of numbers and the various efforts to overcome it in the 1950s. He described the solution he hit upon at TI and explained how Bob Noyce’s work shortly thereafter had complemented his own approach. He showed the slide of his original phase-shift oscillator, with the hand-carved chip glued

The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

by Leslie Berlin · 9 Jun 2005

to Sandwich, Illinois, where his parents and youngest brother had moved after Reverend Noyce had been asked to leave his job at the Congregational Conference. Bob Noyce returned to his parents a chastened soul, con- Adrenaline and Gasoline 23 vinced he had brought disgrace on himself and his family. It must

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in a small green memoranda book that fit in his pocket. On October 10, Shockley noted, “Noyce—Philco; has talked sense about surface transistor.” Bob Noyce had presented a paper on “Observations of Channel Formation on N- and P-Type Semiconductors” at the last Electrochemical Society conference. The subject of his

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different impurities should be diffused into the surface of the semiconductor. Gordon Moore empirically tested Hoerni’s theories in furnaces he had helped to build. Bob Noyce led a group focused on transistors, paying special attention to the work and results Bell Labs had reported on the diffusion process. Noyce had ample

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an excellent teacher. Before joining Shockley, the group of eight had, between them, three years of transistor experience — and all that experience resided in Bob Noyce. None of them had ever worked with silicon. After less than 18 months with Shockley, however, the eight were sufficiently competent to start a company

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to huge equipment manufacturers, were on a quest to find a solution to the interconnections problem.14 102 THE MAN BEHIND THE MICROCHIP Neither Bob Noyce nor anyone else at Fairchild Semiconductor set out with a grand plan to resolve the tyranny of numbers, though the integrated circuit accomplished precisely that

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own furnaces and Noyce had to scrounge for photolithography lenses at a camera shop.63 Sweeping developments unrelated to electronics also benefited Fairchild Semiconductor and Bob Noyce. The increasing mechanization of agriculture in California freed up thousands of low-skilled workers for work in electronics assembly plants. An aggressive state-sponsored

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published. And she created beautiful needlepoint art and quilts, several of which elaborately chronicled the family’s activities. She suspected that her husband was unfaithful. Bob Noyce functioned in a testosterone-drenched world in which all of his equals were men and every woman a subordinate. “The business ran on alcohol and

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had carefully worked out the wording: Paul. Have just learned that [two senior Semiconductor managers] are leaving for National and have reason to believe that Bob Noyce plans to join them. Delicately probe his intentions and report back. Urgent. Tom. Bay agreed to send the telegram immediately, and the group, eagerly

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suing Noyce: “We just said, ‘The hell with it.’ There was no way Sherman Fairchild, who was still active, would sue Bob Noyce. . . . All the up Sherman ever had was from Bob Noyce. Bob Noyce made Fairchild. So why screw around with this [talk of a suit] any more?”11 Grove, Vadasz, and the MOS team

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, explains that it was he, not serendipity, that brought Intel and Busicom together. Sasaki says he had long felt great gratitude to Fairchild and Bob Noyce because the planar and integrated circuit research published by Fairchild had contributed to Sasaki’s own professional success. Sasaki had also been intrigued by an

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orchardist wrote (in a rather poignantly titled book Passing Farms, Enduring Values) that although the Old West was gone, its spirit endured in men like Bob Noyce. “Thanks, in part, to Noyce, today’s Santa Clara County has a reputation for egalitarian management,” she wrote. “He has been credited with establishing

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as lone riders without government help—indeed, sometimes in the face of government harassment.”35 Most prominent among the “lone riders” for the SIA was Bob Noyce. He “is something of a legend in the electronics world,” wrote the Harvard Business Review. “The Washington establishment wanted to get to know him

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Semiconductor Industry Association reading room SSC Stanford Special Collections, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. ST SEMATECH archives 309 310 Notes to Pages 1–10 Introduction 1. Bob Noyce took me under his wing: Steve Jobs, interview by author. 2. Big is bad, small cooperates more: Noyce, “The Fruit of Success,” Chemtech, Dec.

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College application, courtesy Grinnell College. Scrapbook: “My Hobby,” 1939, ASB. 2. Paper balloons, lighting models afire: Gaylord Noyce, eulogy at the San Jose service for Bob Noyce; Wilfred George, “’The Rest of the Story’ about Dr. Robert Noyce,” 4 Nov. 2001 [unpublished reminiscence], courtesy Wilfred George. 3. Barnstormer plane ride: Don Gregson

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, interview by author. 27. Noyce bereft at Gaylord’s departure: Harriet Noyce, “I Remember,” 37. 28. Relations between Noyces and Gales: Grant Gale, “Remembering Bob Noyce as a Student,” 4 Sept. 1990, DSN. 312 Notes to Pages 18–22 29. Gale’s teaching methods and homilies: Keith Olsen, interview by author

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to Computeres,” 230. We expect great things from you: Samuel Stevens to Robert Noyce, 7 May 1945, courtesy Grinnell College. 37. Interest in Smythe report: Bob Noyce to Family, 22 Jan. [1946], ASB. 38. He never pushed himself forward: Scott Crom, interview by Evan Ramstad, April 1995, courtesy Evan Ramstad. 39.

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the bank clerk: letter fragment, 16 July [1945], reprinted in D. Noyce, “Candles to Computers,” 230. 43. Noyce’s motivation for joining the diving team: Bob Noyce to Folks, 23 Sept. [1945]. Grinnell pool description: George Drake, interview by author, 15 Aug. 2002. 44. Envisioning myself at the next level: Ann

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be ready to accept youth’s offer of repentance: Ralph Noyce to Karl Dearborn, 2 June 1948, ASB. Annuitant table quite outdated: Bob Noyce to Dad, July 1948, DSN. Loneliness: Bob Noyce to Dad, July 1948, DSN. Congratulations high dive brain child: Western Union telegram from Mary Alice, 24 Feb. 1949, ASB. Equitable

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job offer: Noyce to Family Everywhere, 4 May 1949, courtesy Penny Noyce. Struck like an atom bomb: “Living Legends” [video], ASB. I couldn’t grasp: Bob Noyce, interview by T. R. Reid, 31 March 1982, courtesy T .R. Reid (henceforth Noyce, 1982 Reid interview). On the transistor and vacuum tubes: Transistorized!

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dissertation work: Robert Norton Noyce, “A Photoelectric Investigation of Surface States on Insulators,” (unpublished MIT doctoral dissertation, September, 1953). 36. Noyce’s accident and visitors: Bob Noyce to Folks, 13 Jan. 1953. 37. Philco needed me: Noyce quoted in Tekla Perry, “Famous First Jobs,” IEEE Spectrum, July 1967: 48. Noyce felt he

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Frank Keiper, interview by author. Philco’s problems: Philco Annual Report, 1953–1956. By 1956, earnings were only $250,000. Philco not convinced research pays: Bob Noyce to Family, 9 March 1955. Bullshit, waste and good science: Robert Noyce, interview by Herbert Kleiman, 1965, M827, SSC. Noyce’s procrastination on military compliance

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be necessary to amplify legal controls.” Robert R. Dockson, “A Comprehensive Study of the Electronics Industry,” Western Electronic News, Nov. 1962, 17. Selling the group: Bob Noyce to Mother and Dad, 4 Sept. 1957, courtesy Polly Noyce. Formal negotiations: The negotiations were technically between the group of eight and Fairchild Controls, a

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made by Fairchild and immediately rejected by Coyle. Works every time: This story is from Julius Blank, interview by author. All quotes in this paragraph: Bob Noyce to Mother and Dad, 4 Sept. 1957, courtesy Polly Noyce. Moore saddened: Gordon Moore, interview by author. PhD production line: Fairchild Founder A, interview

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Stone. Details of contract: Contract between “the California Group” and “Fairchild Controls,” 19 Sept. 1957, Shockley Papers, Accession # 95–153, SSC. See also letter from Bob Noyce to employees, “Fairchild Semiconductor, 1957–1977” (booklet of reproduced items pertaining to the first 20 years of Fairchild Semiconductor’s existence), SSC. A very good

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: Jay Last, interview by author. 24. Refrigerator salesman story: Penny Noyce, interview with author, 9 April 2002. 25. To cover necessary expenditures: Richard Hodgson to Bob Noyce, 2 Oct. 1957, Misc 581, SSC. Noyce earned more: Salaries for Blank, Grinich, Hoerni, Last, and Moore were $13,800. Kleiner and Roberts were

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and Phyllis White, interview by author; Bob and Phyllis Kefauver, interview by author. A thousand times: Penny Noyce, speaking at the SEMATECH memorial service for Bob Noyce. Relaxing to work on something: Bill Noyce, interview by author. Worried she was damaging: interview with family friend requesting anonymity. Several of Noyce’s children

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IEEE Spectrum, Jan. 1966, 102. 18. Technology looking for applications: Moore in Moore, Vadasz, Parker oral history. 19. We have no idea: Harriet Noyce to Bob Noyce, undated (but clearly summer, 1968), IA. 20. On Noyce’s activities at the start of Intel: Noyce 1968 datebook, ASB; Noyce to Frank Roberts [attorney

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49. On Route 128: Saxenian, Regional Advantage. The whole concept of Intel: Dick Hodgson, interview by author. 50. So Betty’s home: Harriet Noyce to Bob Noyce, undated (but clearly summer, 1968), IA. Harriet thought Betty had made Bob overly interested in money: Penny Noyce, interview by author. 51. High muckety-mucks

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work: Noyce and Hoff, “A History of Microprocessor Development at Intel,” IEEE Micro, Feb. 1981. Noyce’s speech during family bus ride: Linda Vognar and Bob Noyce [Don Noyce’s son], interview by author. 90. Microprocessor was just a toy: Bill Davidow, interview by author. 91. Microprocessor falling through the floor:

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. 71. Bob practically disappeared: Andy Grove, interview by author. 72. Population of Crete: approximation based on census data . $50,000 donation: Philip Heckman to Bob Noyce, 21 June 1975, ASB. 73. Dedication of the Noyce Chapel at Doane College: Unless otherwise noted, the description and quotes are from a booklet of

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image: Wells Fargo, “Economic Forecast,” IA. Business machine: Andy Grove, handwritten notes titled “Stanford talk—Si Valley,” IA. Look around Silicon Valley: Noyce quoted in “Bob Noyce talks to Upside,” Upside, July 1990 [interview date is 23 May 1990]. Former Stanford Dean of Engineering James Gibbons, a long-time participant in and

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(New York: The Free Press, 1986): 130, 152. Watch the store: Noyce, “Creativity by the Numbers,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1980. 3. Rare Bob Noyce Sighting: Inteleads, 1 Apr. 1983, IA. Twentieth anniversary celebration: video, IA. Hard to get off the stage: Mar Dell Casto, interview by author. Notes to

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Pages 258–262 357 4. Noyce’s poem: courtesy Maryles Casto. The poem is signed, “1980, Bob Noyce.” 5. Friendship, friendship: Oh Say, Can IC? (script excerpt), First Annual Industry Banquet, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute, 26 May 1971, IA. 6. Japanese

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Slit our throats: Noyce quoted in Gene Bylinsky, “The Japanese Spies in Silicon Valley,” Fortune, 27 Feb. 1978; Almost thrown out of Japan: Rich Karlgaard, “Bob Noyce Talks to Upside,” Upside, July 1990 (interview 23 May 1990). Karate chop: Noyce, World Trade and the Challenges Facing the U.S. Semiconductor Industry [speech

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Takers?” Electronic News, 23 May 1988. 26. Find someone better: Robert N. Noyce, “SEMATECH Presentation, Washington Press Conference, July 27, 1988,” IA; Otis Port, “Bob Noyce Created Silicon Valley. Can He Save It?” Business Week, 15 Aug. 1988, 76. Prefer not to see life’s work: Noyce quoted in “Living Legends

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Carrie Dolan and Eduardo Lachica, “SEMATECH Names Intel’s Noyce to Head Semiconductor Industry Research Group,” Wall Street Journal, 28 July 1988. Congressional reaction: “Bob Noyce Created Silicon Valley and Now He’s Asked to Save It.” Turkey farm: Dolan and Lachica, “SEMATECH Names Intel’s Noyce.” Nothing like hiring a

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Role Models are Those Without Fame,” Washington Post, 8 June 1990. Apple tribute: ASB. 2. Make sure we’re preparing: Noyce quoted in Karlgaard, “Bob Noyce Talks to Upside.” 3. Maybe 100 components: Turner Hasty, interview by Evan Ramstad, 25 April 1997, courtesy Evan Ramstad. 90 million transistors per person: SIA

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Street Journal, 28 July 1988. Flanagan, James. “Robert Noyce or Ivan Boesky? The Choice is Really Ours,” Los Angeles Times, 10 June 1990. Karlgaard, Richard. “Bob Noyce Talks to Intel.” Upside, July 1990, 54. Lindgren, Nilo. “Building a Rational Two-Headed Monster: The Management Style of Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore,” Innovation

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1981. Perry, Tekla. “Famous First Jobs,” IEEE Spectrum, July 1967, 48. Petit, Charles. “Wizard of Silicon Gulch.” Peninsula Times Tribune, 21 September 1977. Port, Otis. “Bob Noyce Created Silicon Valley. Can He Save It?” Business Week, 15 August 1988, 76. Richards, Evelyn. “In Noyce’s Passing, an Era Also Ends: Electronics Pioneer

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recordings, Stanford Special Collections. Transcript of the “Machine that Changed the World” interview, Intel archives. Noyce interview by Rich Karlgaard, 23 May 1990. Printed in “Bob Noyce Talks to Upside,” Upside, July 1990. “Interview Robert Noyce—1973,” Intel Archives. Interview, Robert Noyce, Regarding his Work at SEMATECH, Intel Archives. Robert Noyce,

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Anne McMurray Jack Melchor George Messenger Gordon Moore* Gordon Moore Donna Myers Ron Newburgh Maurice Newstein* Hester P. Newton Bob Norman Penny Noyce Bill Noyce Bob Noyce (son of Don Noyce) Don and Bettie Noyce* Gaylord and Dotey Noyce* Penny Noyce* Ralph Noyce* Polly Noyce* Keith Olson Ken Oshman Evan Ramstad

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teacher who introduced him to the transistor. Courtesy Grinnell College Archives. The four Noyce brothers—Don, Gaylord, Bob, and Ralph—in 1950. Family photos. Bob Noyce and Betty Bottomley and their parents on the couple’s wedding day in 1953. Left to right: Reverend Ralph Noyce, Betty Bottomley Noyce, Harriet Noyce

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, Frank Bottomley, Bob Noyce, and Helen Bottomley. Courtesy George Clark. Noyce’s four children smile from the steps of their new home around Christmas, 1962. Family photos. The

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in production. Visible in the background is a man supervising the women (always called “girls”) at work. Courtesy Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries. Bob Noyce and manufacturing head Charlie Sporck speak to employees at Fairchild’s Portland, Maine facility. A casual style was a hallmark of Noyce’s approach to

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the Wagon Wheel. Photo by Carolyn Caddes. Courtesy Carolyn Caddes and the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries. Brenda and Roger Borovoy, Betty and Bob Noyce, and Paul Hwoschinsky (in fake mustache and pipe) in Vienna for a licensing deal, pose near a sign they think would amuse their friend Charlie

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Family photos. Noyce in the cockpit of his World War Two era Seabee airplane. Family photos. President George H. W. Bush congratulates Ann Bowers and Bob Noyce on Noyce’s Draper Award. Family photos. Noyce speaks at the official opening of SEMATECH, a joint government-industry manufacturing research consortium. From 1988 until

Microchip: An Idea, Its Genesis, and the Revolution It Created

by Jeffrey Zygmont · 15 Mar 2003

design by Jeff Williams Set in 11-point New Aster by the Perseus Books Group First printing, January 2003 123456789 10—06 05 04 03 Bob Noyce said that "optimism is an essential ingredient for innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security, adventure over staying in safe places?" To

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Bob Noyce, and every other optimist. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Prologue: Changing Minds xiii = PART I LAYING THE FOUNDATION = 3 22 40 49 58 76 94 104 120

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insurrectionists had much business experience. They were engineers and science dandies. They let Noyce take the lead because in addition to his keen analytical insight, Bob Noyce was a man of general abilities who seemed able to accomplish most anything he set his mind to. He was a natural leader anyway, charismatic

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might make upon Hoerni's innovation. Destiny might have picked him for the job. If it did, it could not have made a better selection. Bob Noyce was brilliantly inventive. "Bob was a very creative guy," attests Gordon Moore. "Frustratingly so, because no matter what you were doing, he always had an

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its past rather than to look hopefully toward the future. "In the 1940s," wrote Wolfe, "a bright youngster whose parents were not rich, such as Bob Noyce or his brother Donald, was far more likely to receive a superior education in Iowa than in Massachusetts. And if he was extremely bright, if

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to beat rivals who wanted to win just as badly. Fairchild Semiconductor's early victories came from the exceptional qualities of its founders, beginning with Bob Noyce. For one thing, the team was intrepid, moving rapidly along paths that discoveries and innovations pointed to inexorably. Speed was essential because the technology advanced

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in high-flying, double-diffused mesas improving all the time. "The management at the time had a difficult decision," Hoerni stated. "To the credit of Bob Noyce, he overruled the rest of his staff and said, 'we are going to make transistors this way.'" Similarly, Noyce did not debate or dither for

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on January 11, 1965, "it's still too expensive for most industrial customers." Therefore there must have been at least a measure of desperation behind Bob Noyce's decision at Fairchild to cut prices below the bare bones. "He told them he would sell them the integrated circuit for less than they

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personal sense of propriety. Hoff took his worries to his boss. He said that he thought he could create a more reasonable design. His boss, Bob Noyce, said okay, give it a whirl. Thus began the project that showed that the ultimate in miniaturization had arrived: an entire, programmable computer could be

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planned. For those it found tiny Intel, alone and late to the dance. Intel was still so small that Ted Hoff's immediate supervisor was Bob Noyce, the chief executive. But that arrangement wasn't for austerity alone. From lessons learned at Fairchild, Intel's bosses believed a technology company had to

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with a wide range of freedom. People had assigned responsibilities, but they could also wander into other inquiries, as long as they wandered productively. Therefore Bob Noyce didn't flinch when Ted Hoff came from out of the blue in July 1969 to worry over Busicom's mixed up circuit sketches. "I

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? How do we do Great Debates 125 it? What are we getting ourselves into? There was just a constant agony. "I remember one meeting with Bob Noyce, where Bob said, 'We've got a tiger by the tail. We don't know what to do.'" Hoff chuckles. "He said, 'We're not

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started to look at ICs." 148 MICROCHIP A connection at the University of Iowa sent them straight to the top of Intel to talk to Bob Noyce, an Iowan who was already in the running for the state's favorite-son award. Noyce felt intrigued by Amana's idea. And Foerstner and

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, that number was forty. By 1976, fifty- four microprocessors were in contention. "It was clearly a time of wide-ranging experimentation," characterized Ted Hoff and Bob Noyce in a later magazine article. Accordingly, Essex ran trials using Rockwell's PPS-4, which turned out to be too difficult to program. It fiddled

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of the calculator chips that Hoff had turned into the 4004. Shima had stayed, joining Intel and directing design of the 8080 chip in 1974. Bob Noyce would later call him the world's most influential microprocessor designer. That's very high praise. But in the large scheme of events, Shima and

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Faggin and even Bob Noyce himself were only a few of the many strivers who advanced their art by responding to the enticements of corporate ownership. Likewise, Wang Labs wasn

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selling chips. Both Advanced Micro and Intel spilled out of Fairchild Semiconductor at about the same time. In 1969, a year after Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce cut out to create Intel, flamboyant Jerry Sanders led a second Epilogue 217 band of defectors from Fairchild, establishing Advanced Micro. It is still largely

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. page 196 The first naive noninitiates ...; Koplow. page 196 In Iowa, Steven Gustafson had employed ...; Gustafson. page 197 In fact, in 1978 ...; Koplow. page 197 Bob Noyce would later call him ...; "A History of Microprocessor Development at Intel." page 198 By 1978, it was shipping nearly 800 ...; information on the sales rates

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby · 1 Feb 2022 · 935pp · 197,338 words

more of it. Unlike the Whitneys and the Rockefellers, he might be tickled by the notion of a new semiconductor venture. In late August 1957, Bob Noyce and Eugene Kleiner flew to New York. They made their way to Sherman Fairchild’s Manhattan town house, which was fitted out with glass walls

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meetings featured brownies and whiskey; and new hires straight out of grad school were empowered to make major purchasing decisions. As the weather turned warmer, Bob Noyce, the acting chief of the collective, showed up at work in shorts.[96] Six months after the founding, Rock went out to California to check

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara · 8 Jul 2019

, the Traitorous Eight landed a contract to manufacture 100 silicon transistors for an onboard computer for “the manned missile,” a new long-range bomber. Wisely, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore were adamant that Fairchild conduct its own research, rather than depending on government contracts that would not let them own resulting patents

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to place multiple transistors on a single silicon wafer by protecting them with a coating of chemical oxide. Hoerni’s “planar process” allowed his colleague Bob Noyce to experiment with linking the transistors together, creating an integrated circuit, or IC, more powerful than any device before it. Another advantage: the material. Back

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federal contract could provide. By and large, electronics entrepreneurs were young men from modest backgrounds, book smart but not Wall Street smart. These would-be Bob Noyces and Ken Olsens needed management advice. Guidance on marketing, sales, advertising. Legal help with writing contracts and filing patents and allocating stock options. And they

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, with the stride of a natural athlete, William Henry Draper III was a different sort of California migrant than heartland boys like Burt McMurtry and Bob Noyce. Born on New Year’s Day 1928, he was the son of a distinguished banker and diplomat, raised in the affluence of Westchester County, a

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joined another young San Francisco money man, William Hambrecht, to start a new breed of boutique investment bank, specializing in high-tech start-ups. And Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore departed Fairchild Semiconductor and its micromanaging investors to found a completely venture-financed company that didn’t have to pay fealty to

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manufacturers who were scrambling to stay competitive. And they no longer needed defense contracts to survive. The king of the Fairchildren was Intel, founded when Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore decamped from Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 after years of chafing under the micromanagement of its East Coast parent company. In contrast, Intel

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, overseas.8 Within headquarters, chip executives grouped their employees into small teams that competed against one another to develop the best product. “Big is bad,” Bob Noyce declared in a keynote address to a group of businessmen in December 1976. “The spirit of the small group is better and the work is

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free-market Republicanism like that practiced by Dave Packard, yet were aware of how government shaped their operations, and paid deference to the system. As Bob Noyce put it in 1970: “This really is a controlled society, controlled out of Washington, and if you’re trying to steer around in all the

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mentor to a generation of state and local politicians. He even donated to East Palo Alto’s Nairobi College. Leaders of the semiconductor industry, particularly Bob Noyce, ultimately became deeply engaged in politics and philanthropy. But their engagement focused on the national and global, not the local. To be sure, the men

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by the intensity of Jobs’s ambition, had left. Jobs bought out his 10 percent stake for $2,300.) A great admirer of Intel’s Bob Noyce, Jobs wanted to build a campaign for the Apple II that was as jazzy as the one that had propelled the Intel 8080 into the

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temper wasn’t at all remarkable. But his skill set was. Here was someone who combined Andy Grove’s gimlet-eyed understanding of product with Bob Noyce’s charisma, in a youthful package with countercultural appeal. The barefoot vegan with the straggly beard also understood that the sales job at hand involved

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starker. Instead of mop-haired engineers with motherboards, there were millionaires in sport coats, all staring down the evening’s guest of honor. Intel’s Bob Noyce was there. So was Tom Ford, the real estate developer who was in the process of turning Sand Hill Road into the premier address for

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percolated through media coverage since the 1950s, of voyages to sun-drenched patios and late-night hackathons, of tales of Jerry Sanders’s cars and Bob Noyce’s airplanes, of odes to venture capital’s “Olympics of capitalism” and the chipmakers’ “high technology jelly beans.” Those stories, too, were products of masterful

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.C. to plead the case to lawmakers. It was the hyperkinetic inventor’s version of “retirement.”8 At first, even the dash and charisma of Bob Noyce had a hard time breaking through. Politicians didn’t know RAM from ROM, and it was hard to convince them to care about jobs that

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should do. It was a blending of high-tech generations, linked by the marketing guru who had made all of them into business-world celebrities: Bob Noyce next to Steve Jobs, Charlie Sporck across from Jerry Sanders, and, down the table, a rising-star software-company CEO named Sandra Kurtzig, one of

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different. Capital gains remained the chief preoccupation of the older generation, but you’d rarely find anyone from the younger crowd adding their voices. The Bob Noyces and Burt McMurtrys lobbied lawmakers in the road-tested manner practiced by nearly every other industry: visits to Congressional offices, blizzards of issue briefs, hours

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going to Austin, Texas. But the Valley got to leave its imprint in the end: after no one immediately stepped up to run the operation, Bob Noyce agreed with some reluctance to relocate to Texas to become its director. Texas was riding high, too, with the arrival of incoming President George H

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Valley, high-tech power players felt that the new president just didn’t get it.36 Another, bigger jolt came only a few months later. Bob Noyce died suddenly in Austin in June 1990, felled by a heart attack at the age of 62. Sematech no longer had its dynamic chief executive

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liaison to Washington’s power brokers. His death signaled a generational change, the end of an era when Valley leaders had been men much like Bob Noyce: crew-cut engineers in shirtsleeves who were children of the Depression, molded by the Cold War, makers of tangible things like chips and computer terminals

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. In the 1980s, Ed Zschau had been Silicon Valley’s Congressman, crusading on the industry’s behalf on trade and tax and everything in between. Bob Noyce and Steve Jobs had been the charismatic CEO-ambassadors trolling Washington’s corridors of power. Dave Packard had been the gray eminence in the background

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris · 14 Feb 2023 · 864pp · 272,918 words

the early 1960s, only around five years after the company started, Fairchild opened its first overseas assembly plant, in Hong Kong. The move—suggested by Bob Noyce—surprised the rest of the industry, but with the low start-up costs for assembly lines, it was a textbook case of labor arbitrage. According

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

by Alice Schroeder · 1 Sep 2008 · 1,336pp · 415,037 words

had grown to Rosenfield. Naturally, he went straight onto the finance committee, where he found the trustees to be a group of like-minded men. Bob Noyce, who ran a company called Fairchild Semiconductor, which made electronic circuits—something about which Buffett knew little and had even less interest—was chairman. Noyce

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it came to all the new technology companies that were forming. At Grinnell College, he showed up for a meeting to find his fellow trustee Bob Noyce itching to leave Fairchild Semiconductor. Noyce, Gordon Moore (its research director), and its assistant director of research and development, Andy Grove, had decided to start

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watchword of the day. High school girls wore necklaces made of Krugerrand coins. A brash new trustee at Grinnell, Steve Jobs, protégé of the esteemed Bob Noyce, tried to talk the investment committee into selling all the stocks and buying gold.36 An engineer in his mid-twenties, Jobs was obviously a

Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age

by Leslie Berlin · 7 Nov 2017 · 615pp · 168,775 words

the previous generation of entrepreneurs down—that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.”1 Throughout his career, Jobs spent time with older entrepreneurs such as Intel’s Robert Noyce

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sell digital watches built around its chips, the technology worked fine, but the business was lost on watchbands and display boxes. That experience, Intel cofounder Bob Noyce would later say, had taught him that “when the other guy’s business looks too good, you don’t know enough about it.”73 For

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Lee used an AMI chip for Home Pong, but they had originally considered an Intel chip instead, and Alcorn invited Intel cofounders Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce to visit Atari. When Don Valentine, who consulted for Atari, heard about the visit, he, in Alcorn’s description, “went ballistic, saying ‘You told them

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Union: January 25, 1983,” Papers of the Presidents: Administration of Ronald Reagan, 107. Reagan also established an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Task Force whose members included Bob Noyce, Spectra-Physics founder Herb Dwight, and Larry Sonsini’s law partner Mario Rosati. 4. This figure is for Santa Clara County only. Lenny Siegel, Testimony