Cinequest 20: The Real Revolutionaries

I had been sick most of the week. Feeling weak from the illness, I decided to invite A to a movie instead of going hiking.

Cinequest 20 was happening and as I was browsing through the movies, deciding on what to watch, I saw a picture of the "Traitorous eight". It was the poster for a movie called "The Real Revolutionaries".

The movie was about the history of the development of the silicon transistor, from the time William Shockley established Shockley's Lab in Palo Alto to Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore establishing Intel.

It is a story I knew well, having read Crystal Fire and hearing stories from the late Prof Henry Guckel when I hung around his lab.

The movie started with describing William Shockley, whom the movie described as a brilliant but arrogant scientist. He hired some of the smartest engineers in the US to work for him, but never quite trusted his employees. He micromanaged, was paranoid about the loyalty of his employees and egoistic. Shockley labs was going to build a new transistor device different from the device that won the 1956 Nobel prize. That effort went no where, and eight of the employees, left to form Fairchild Semiconductor, a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation.

Fairchild semiconductor division did very well and was very profitable, but when Robert Noyce found out he was passed over for the CEO position, he and Gordon Moore left to form Intel.

The movie spent some time on Shockley's life after semiconductor and his views on race and intelligence. Robert Noyce's womanizing ways were not mentioned:) There was also lots of cartoons to try explain semiconductor physics. The film mentioned some of the social events happening around the same time, such as the Kent State shootings and Woodstock, but insisted real revolutions were happening in the labs of Silicon Valley.

I felt it was too much material for one movie to tackle, and after watching the movie, I felt unsatisfied. I would recommend people read Crystal Fire instead for more detail history of the silicon transistors.

After the movie, A and I went to House of Siam for dinner. Read my review of the restaurant on Yelp!

Given my nagging cough, we called it a night after dinner.