Google Celebrates Robert Noyce’s Life with Today’s Search Logo

Google has never been shy about paying its respect to both the heroes of history and those of our time, and today, the company’s search engine logo is dedicated to none other than Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of both Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. In his lifetime, he was granted a total of 15 patents while with Fairchild, including the one for the IC, which can be perused here.

Months ago, the great Dennis Ritchie passed, and in our post we mentioned that the world would just not be where it is without his invention of the C programming language. The same can be said for Noyce and his invention of the integrated circuit, because without that, Dennis Ritchie wouldn’t have had hardware to create his software. It was this invention that led to part of northern California becoming known as “Silicon Valley”.

Noyce may have passed some twenty-one years ago, but he and his major role in computing history will never be forgotten.