In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born sale**an who would co-invent the microchip -- an essential ponent of nearly all modern electronics today, including puters, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.