Cofounder, Intel
Search every verified Robert Noyce interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a rare interview, Robert Noyce, vice chairman of Intel and a pioneer of the integrated circuit, discussed the impact of inexpensive computing power. He argued that concerns about technology making people "morons" were similar to fears that the steam engine would turn people into "jellyfish," and stated that such tools have enhanced lives. Noyce predicted that future communications and computer power would allow people to work remotely, enabling them to "live where it is conducive to live, not where it is conducive to work," as most work involves knowledge rather than physical materials. In a 1984 lecture marking the 25th anniversary of the integrated circuit, Noyce reviewed the technology's development from the 1950s. He noted that early challenges included low transistor yields and market opposition from engineers who feared losing their jobs. Noyce described the trend of increasing complexity, referencing "Moore's curve," and projected that within a decade it would be possible to place between 100 million and a billion transistors on a single chip, adding that "the sky is still the limit" for what can be imagined for the technology.
“I think the most important thing about what has happened in the integrated circuit business, the computer business, is that it has made computing power very, very inexpensive.”
“There's been a lot of concern that this might turn us all into morons. It might be the same thing as suggesting, however, that the steam engine would all turn us all into jellyfish.”
“With modern communications and the extension of what we can see in communications and in computer power in getting information transferred back and forth, there is no reason why you could not carry on this interview at home at your office with me at my office.”
“I think that as we look farther into the future, we're going to find that people will live where it is conducive to live, not where it is conducive to work.”
“The movement of the work to the individual will be much easier because, as I say, most of our people are doing knowledge work, not work with physical materials.”
“The integrated circuit and the computer is now affecting every part of our activity.”
“There was more money being spent by DOD on research contracts than there were sales being made of products.”
“That took a square inch of silicon ... we were making transistor chips on those that were about 10 mils on a side ... I had to attach a couple of wires as well as soldering it down — the assembly plants' employment outnumbered the rest of the company by two to one and much of that assembly was done in areas where labor...”
“One of the characteristics of an inventor I think is that he's lazy — he doesn't like to do it the hard way.”
“There was a lot of market opposition to using these integrated circuits — 'How can I possibly use your circuit design? I'm going to throw myself out of a job.'”
“This is sort of the classic Moore's curve — every year for at least a while in there you could get something twice as complex as you could the year before.”
“The assembly cost of putting individual transistors together really depended on the number of leads that you had to attach to it ... the decreasing yield as we go to higher and higher complexity — the combination of those two costs will have a minimum.”
“The Air Force was working on things like Project Tinker Toy — they were trying to get all kinds of elements into a nice little square package so that you could stack them up and make nice square little modules ... so that maybe you could put them in missiles or something like that.”
“As we were thinking about BLSI we decided really that memory was the thing to concentrate on.”
“If we continue the trend we've had in the past we can go up easily another factor of 10 in the area that we use — within, oh, say a decade it would be possible to put between 100 million and a billion transistors on that same chip, if you could figure out what to do with it.”
Robert Noyce—the man who co-founded Intel, invented the microchip, and helped create Silicon Valley—speaks in this rare and ...
Recorded: May 11, 1984 Robert Noyce is credited with Jack Kilby for the invention of the integrated circuit and co-founded both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. In this 1984 lecture, Robert Noyce reviews the development of the integrated circuit from its infancy in the 1950s to the early-1980s as well as its impact on technology and society. Noyce discusses the innovations in transistors that lead to the creation of the integrated circuit. Next, Robert Noyce talks about the technical challenges of building increasingly more compact and more powerful semiconductors as well as the overall ef…
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