Part 4/8:
With backing from Sherman Fairchild, the traitorous 8 founded Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View, California. The company focused on developing silicon transistors, which were a more scalable improvement over the germanium-based designs Shockley had championed. Fairchild rapidly gained traction in the 1960s, evolving into one of the first companies to produce integrated circuits. These circuits, which combined multiple transistors and components onto a single chip, revolutionized electronics, making it possible to create everything from mainframe computers to consumer gadgets.