TI donates Fairchild notebooks to Computer History Museum
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Texas Instruments has donated archive material – including more than 1000 engineering notebooks kept by such legends as Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore – to the US Computer History Museum. The notebooks were part of a donation of more than 115 boxes of historical records.
TI acquired the documents in 2011 when it purchased National Semiconductor, which had owned them since it bought Fairchild in 1987.
John Hollar, the Museum's president, said: "These rare, historic notebooks contain the work that paved the way for 'Moore's Law', the explosive growth of electronic computing and the foundation of the switched on world we live in today. We are proud to ensure they will be preserved for and presented to future generations, and we are enormously grateful to TI for its generosity and vision in making this gift."
The notebooks are said to represent an almost day by day account of the work done by Fairchild staff to develop planar technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dag Spicer, the Museum's senior curator, added: "These notebooks describe the painstaking and creative approach Fairchild scientists and engineers took to solving problems in semiconductor design and manufacture. They are cultural treasures that record a true inflection point in human history."
Seen at the handover ceremony are, from the left, Paula Jabloner, director of collections for Computer History Museum, David Laws, semiconductor curator for the Computer History Museum, and Joan Scott, director of community relations for Texas Instruments in Silicon Valley.
