Fascinating talk tonight by Gordon Moore of Intel, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Carver Mead acting as interviewer. (For those who don't know them, Moore was a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and later Intel, and a seminal figure in that industry; Carver Mead a professor in related specialties, in contact with Moore since 1959.) Audience included Intel alumni and journalists. Occasion was 40th anniversary of "Moore's law" which predicted in 1965 the doubling of semiconductor density periodically, "for at least the next 10 years" (it continues today).
Moore spent some of his time on explosives, and their popularity as a motivator for technical careers, a popularity that proves to be surprisingly wide. That will presumably be the main interest in this note, but first a little more about semiconductors. (First the broccoli, then dessert!)
Moore's original 1965 article in _Electronics_ (I picked up a copy) projected integrated circuits (ICs) becoming commonplace in products like car control systems, home computers, portable telephones. "The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today." He included projections such as the curve that became Moore's Law (Carver Mead, I understand, coined that name later), based at the time only on 1959-1965 density data. He explained to us that the whole motivation of the article was to "sell" the idea of ICs to the electronics industry which regarded them, at the time, as expensive and exotic, of interest only for high-priced apps in military or aerospace. Moore provided data suggesting otherwise, that ICs would become mainstream technology, which is obvious now, after-the-fact. Later he mentioned some of the magnitudes of integrated component manufacture now; 10 to the 18th power of transistors produced annually, comparable to the number of letters in printed documents -- and a transistor on an IC is now cheaper, on average, than a readable text character printed on paper.
Moore was a chemist by training, and explained that he got into chemistry originally as a child because a neighbor got a chemistry set -- "they had good stuff in them in those days!" -- and quickly became skilled at blowing things up. He made nitroglycerin, which he would detonate by putting a drop on a piece of filter paper and striking it with a hammer on an iron anvil. This made a very sharp crack, and would leave his ears ringing for an hour or two. Moore explained that this damaged his hearing, and led to his later relying on a hearing aid. This was around Redwood City, California, where his father was a deputy sheriff. At one point, officials found a collection of tools somewhere that looked like they were for cracking open safes, and a little bottle of yellowish liquid, which had them concerned. As Moore told it, his father called him in on the case (he was still an adolescent) and he tested a drop of the liquid with his filter-paper technique, and it blew. The deputies were then worried about how to dispose of the nitro, but Moore stepped forward eagerly -- "I'll take care of that." (He held up both hands to us, in the proud sign of the successful explosives hobbyist: All digits present.) They also made rockets, he said, but good rockets were difficult -- "it was much easier to blow things up."
Later at Cal Tech when he was a grad student in chemistry, someone did a survey and found that 80% of the Chem grad students got into it via fireworks and explosives. Amazing!