Google Doodle honours Intel co-founder

Google is tipping its hat to Intel co-founder Robert Royce with a Google Doodle on its homepage on what would have been Noyce’s 84th birthday.

A Google Doodle is a stylised Google logo that the search engine places on its homepage to mark historical events. The Doodle in honour of Noyce pays tribute to his work on the microchip, with an image of an electronic chip and Google’s name on the circuit board.

Noyce and his colleague Jack Kilby have been credited with inventing the integrated circuit, which planted the seed for digital developments and gave Silicon Valley, the high-tech region in California, its name. Noyce was even nicknamed “the Mayor of Silicon Valley”.

Noyce was an electronics engineer, as well as an entrepreneur. He co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and in 1968 he and Gordon Moore co-founded Intel, with plans to name the company Moore Noyce. That idea was quickly shelved, however, as Noyce thought it sounded too much like “more noise”.

Noyce, who was born 12 December 1927 in Burlington, Iowa, died of heart failure on 3 June 1990, in Austin, Texas. He was 60.

^{Intel co-founder Robert Noyce}