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

by Leslie Berlin

William Shockley’s methods of using simplifying assumptions to speed up his company’s research, Noyce had come to believe that scientists could approach their work in two very different ways. Researchers could adopt the “pretty” approach, in which they devote a great deal of time and effort to developing a technique or machine that will allow them to test their ideas with exact measurements that yield final definitive answers. Or a researcher could try the “quick and dirty” way, moving forward with an idea as soon as a rather rudimentary test indicates it will probably work. Noyce believed that the quick-and-dirty method generated “90 percent of the answer in 10 percent of the time.” He disdained the pretty method as “a bit like telling a soccer player never to kick the ball until you have an ideal shot all carefully lined up and know exactly how hard to kick the ball. Ninety minutes may be over before you locate that opportunity.”