The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce
In this long 1983 essay for Esquire, Tom Wolfe profiles Robert Noyce, the Iowa-raised physicist who co-invented the integrated circuit and helped found both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Wolfe uses Noyce's Midwestern, plain-spoken style to explain where Silicon Valley's culture came from, including its dislike of hierarchy, its appetite for risk, and its habit of engineers breaking off to start their own companies. The piece reads less like a straight biography than a portrait of an entire way of working, and it remains one of the most cited accounts of how the Valley's founders saw themselves.
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What you might want to know about The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Tom Wolfe's classic Esquire essay on Robert Noyce, the co-founder of Fairchild and Intel, and the culture that built Silicon Valley.
Robert Noyce co-invented the integrated circuit and co-founded both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, earning him the nickname the Mayor of Silicon Valley.
Yes. Patrick Collison lists it on his Silicon Valley history page as a key text on the origins and culture of Fairchild and Intel.
The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce was written by Tom Wolfe.
The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.