Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation
Fairchild Semiconductor was founded in 1957 when Sherman Mills Fairchild, founder of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp., helped a group of scientists set up a transistor manufacturing plant in what is now known as Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Valley, California).
Two of its key employees, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, as well as several others, eventually left to form Intel in 1968.
The Fairchild conglomerate’s major divisions were the semiconductor section in Mountain View, California and a commercial products division a few miles north in Palo Alto.
