If I said the name Bob Noyce to you, odds are you won’t know who he is. I didn’t, until I clicked through on Google’s Doodle of the day today. Today’s Google Doodle is a giant semiconductor. As it turns out, Google has changed its home page to honor the inventor of the microchip, Robert “Bob” Noyce. Today would have been Bob Noyce’s 82nd birthday, and as it turns out, he was one of the titans behind the rise of the American computer industry.
Dubbed The Mayor of Silicon Valley, Bob Noyce founded not one, but two revolutionary companies: Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. He is also credited alongside Jack Kilby as the inventor of the microchip semiconductor, AKA the backbone of the modern computer and the entire computing industry. He was also one of the first titans of Silicon Valley, and one of the most powerful men in the technology industry at the time of his death in 1990, if only from a sheer vision standpoint. After all, Noyce was nicknamed Rapid Robert by his classmates at Grinnell College and MIT, so you know he had a sharp mind and no hint of sloth.
Not bad for a guy from Grinnell, Iowa, huh?