https://ripcorp.biz/episodes/the-story-of-this-town-is-failure-fairchild-semiconductor-and-its-children new RIP Corp and it's a doozy IMO! we took on the history of Fairchild Semiconductor, which is usually told as one of triumph and innovation---which is part of it, but only like the first decade of the company. We get into the everything else of its 59-year history.
@ingrid Even though you did not mention us, I learned more about my employer from this episode than from anything I’ve read (or written) that was explicitly about us.
@ingrid …(with the exception of the Rockefeller Foundation, which also deeply shaped Caltech) & we might best start understanding how philanthropy shapes science by understanding how that specific wealth was concentrated in the first place.
@ingrid [Footnotes on science and foundations: Robert E. Kohler, Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists, 1900–1945; Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology]
@collopy also man, Rockefeller Foundation was just everywhere in the history of science and technology in the 20th century!!
@collopy that's super interesting!
@ingrid You’re telling the story of the money with which Caltech was built! It’s obvious that universities sit in networks of philanthropy & thus wealth & thus industry, but Caltech more than most can trace a lot of its wealth to a specific network of men—Beckman, Fairchild, Moore. (& Jay Last’s print collection is a mile down the road at the Huntington.) I think we know a lot more about how federal funding shaped science (at least during its rapid Cold War growth) than how private funding did…