Chip sales to the Apollo program transformed Fairchild from a small startup into a firm with one thousand employees. Sales ballooned from $500,000 in 1958 to $21 million two years later. As Noyce ramped up production for NASA, he slashed prices for other customers. An integrated circuit that sold for $120 in December 1961 was discounted to $15 by next October. NASA’s trust in integrated circuits to guide astronauts to the moon was an important stamp of approval. Fairchild’s Micrologic chips were no longer an untested technology; they were used in the most unforgiving and rugged environment:
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