Some Enjoyable Readings on Shockley & Noyce

     What a treat to read Tom Wolfe for a class!  His 1987 profile of Robert Noyce for Esquire displays the author's inimitable style, alternating among mordant wit, brilliant descriptive language, and immersive technical detail.  He deftly limns a compelling argument for the importance of Max Weber's "Protestant work ethic" to the creation of the innovative culture for which Silicon Valley became famous (and, indeed, by which that formerly rural, fruit-orchard district earned its name).
     The collaborative, self-disciplined, highly autonomous work environment fostered by Noyce, "the mayor of Silicon Valley," during his leadership of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel contrasts sharply with the corporate hierarchy at Bell Telephone Laboratories, described in loving detail by James Gertner in his new book The Idea Factory.  It was while working at the highly-centralized, heavily funded research arm of American Telephone & Telegraph that the brilliant and mercurial William Shockley began his research into a compact substitute for vacuum tubes known as the "transconductance varistor," later mercifully shortened to transistor.
     Gertner is at his best in describing Shockley (whose oscillations between scientific brilliance and destructive ego trip were the stuff of legend) and the other larger-than-life characters who strode the corridors of Bell Labs during its glory days as the mecca of American communications research.  He is less convincing in his argument that the monopolistic, money-no-object structure of AT&T encouraged innovation.  I actually first encountered Gertner's book last month, in a review published by the Wall Street Journal (and available here).  Reviewer Bob Metcalfe of the University of Texas offers a thoughtful and well-reasoned critique of Gertner's argument for AT&T-sized institutions.  Nevertheless, both Gertner and Wolfe deliver rollicking, eminently readable descriptions of a turning point in modern technology--the magnitude of which is still largely unappreciated, and the makers of which rank with Galileo, Maxwell, and Ford as true pioneers.