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

by Leslie Berlin

it. They had done this type of work at

Chez Yvonne,

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.”

“teetering on the edge of what’s barely possible.”

Wow

and his colleagues in technology-based industries “bad people.” He explained a few years later, “That’s what scared me. [We were] bad compared

You just couldn’t contain him.”