Fairchild rented space in a sandal factory on Hang Yip Street, next to the old Hong Kong airport, right on the shore of Kowloon Bay. Soon a huge Fairchild logo several stories tall was mounted on the building, illuminating the junks sailing around Hong Kong’s harbor. Fairchild continued to make its silicon wafers in California but began shipping semiconductors to Hong Kong for final assembly. In 1963, its first year of operation, the Hong Kong facility assembled 120 million devices. Production quality was excellent, because low labor costs meant Fairchild could hire trained engineers to run
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