Avram Miller, who is my friend and neighbor here in rural Sonoma County, wrote a very insightful post on the passing of Andy Grove. It’s well worth reading.
My own experience with Andy Grove was limited. I knew Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore much better. But I do recall a time when Grove and I were both speakers at a PBS national meeting and sat together. He corrected my pronunciation of the word Zoboomafoo, the title of a PBS animal series for preschoolers.
As someone who started out with Intel computers when the 4004 was a pretty cool little device, I’ve watched the company grow over the years, and with it my access to the things that CPU power makes available. In recent years so many of the old guard are laying down their swords and plowshares and it’s interesting to watch the world change. I now know how my grandfather felt when he started flying an SE5 at 15 years old (he lied to get into the RFC) – the world truly is a remarkable place and it’s the efforts or people like Andy that make it so. Change has no religion or morals, it’s just written.
A senior ( in both uses of the word ) co-worker back around 1998 would call Andy Grove a few times a week to get advice on prostate cancer treatments. The language was so colorful that I joked about the outcome of putting the secretary’s parrot in his office. Some of the language that made it past the door made it hard to believe he was talking to “the” Andy Grove – but after reading Avram Miller’s piece I no longer have doubts.
It may not get quite the as much airplay (at least not in the popular media) but us 50/60-somethings have just lost yet another pioneer of our youth, right up there IMO in terms of impact and greatness as David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Robin Williams and others of “our” era. Sorry to see him go and the passing of that wonderful era of the early PC (remember when we called them “microcomputers?”) but time marches on. Will always look back fondly on those early days in the industry when pioneers like Andy Grove (and dozens of others) helped truly change the world.
Federico Faggin is still alive today and is the CEO of Foveon and is still developing new technology.
Marcian Hoff, Masatoshi Shima, Stanley Mazor are still alive too.
I would like to read Federico Faggin’s stories on Andy Grove.
I would also like to read Cringely’s stories about Federico Faggin.
Is Faggin still CEO? He sold Foveon to Sigma almost ten years ago. I have one of their cameras.
These Federico Faggin pages are on their website
http://www.foveon.com/article.php?a=65
http://www.foveon.com/article.php?a=193
Certainly a brilliant man but by all accounts a very obnoxious one also. His culture of rampant bullying continues at Intel to this day.