William Shockley is a Nobel winner physicist. He coinvented the transistors, which are packed on the billions of silicon chips along with other elements. He set up Shockely Semiconductors in 1955 in Mountain View, California. He wanted to be near his ailing mother who stayed in Palo Alto. This could be one reason for San Francisco Bay Area becoming the home of semiconductors.

However, the actual founding of Silicon Valley is attributed a group of eight engineers. Moore was one among them. He separated from Shockley in 1957. These eight together founded Fairchild Semiconductor. The leader was Bob Noyce who had invented microchip. Noyce founded Intel with Moore. Noyce died in 1990.