The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce

Tom Wolfe's 1983 Esquire essay profiling Robert Noyce — co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel — which is widely considered the best single piece of writing about the founding culture of Silicon Valley.

Captures the specific cultural character of Silicon Valley's founding — the flat hierarchy, the meritocracy, the absence of East Coast corporate formality, the belief that anyone's idea could be heard — in the person of Noyce, who embodied those values and who Wolfe presents as their primary architect.