Season 1

In the wake of World War II, Bell Labs was committed to solving one of the most pressing technological problems of the day: how to control an electrical current without the clumsy, expensive, and fragile vacuum tubes then in use. …

Having left Bell Labs to strike out on his own, William Shockley had some important decisions to make: Who would be the backer for his fledgling company? Who would be on his staff? And where would it launch? In this …

With a backer, a location, and the support of the ambitious Stanford Engineering Department, William Shockley recruiting efforts started in earnest. But having burned his bridges at Bell Labs (and them some!), Shockley resorts to some unorthodox...

After the meeting with Arnold Beckman, the state of Shockley Semiconductor just continues to deteriorate, and the Shockley research staff finally makes their own appeal to Arnold Beckman that something has to change. In this episode, the Shockley...

Despite the boom in the semiconductor industry, the renegade Shockley research scientists and the bankers of Hayden Stone get nothing but the cold shoulder in their search for a backer… until they catch the ear of an eccentric millionaire inventor....

Sputnik sparks the Space Race, and hysteria ensues in the United States. In the meantime, the Fairchild Semiconductor founders get to work. In this episode, the Traitorous Eight have barely moved into their new space, when the Space Race...

Fairchild becomes the David to Texas Instruments’ Goliath, as integrated circuits take the semiconductor stage. In this episode, a young engineer named Jack Kilby causes a stir by invents the first integrated circuit, and the team at Fairchild...

By the early 1960s, Fairchild Camera & Instrument may have been the hottest stock on Wall Street, but internally, trouble was brewing. In this episode, refusing to become “just another employee working in a research lab for somebody else,”...

By breaking open the commercial integrated circuits market, Fairchild’s stock skyrockets… but the breakthrough also seals its fate. In our final episode of Season 1, Fairchild Semiconductor’s success is short-lived, as its meteoric rise is only...