appreciate

Noyce and Computer Games
Intel had developed a new microprocessor chip. It was called the i8008. The 8008
was more advanced, but that wasn 't hard to achieve, considering the design of the
4004. It was an 8-bit computer with a "Von Neumann" architecture. That means
that the program and data are all in the same memory, like current PCs today.
The software group at Intel in 1973 consisted of Bill Byerly, Ken Burgett, and
myself as a consultant. I was under contract to develop a simulator for the Intel
8008, much like the one I had done for the 4004, under direction of microprocessor
manager Hank Smith.
The microprocessor group at Intel occupied the space of a not too large kitchen at
the time. Bob Noyce, founder of Intel walked through occasionally with his usual
smile. and gave a few pats, but they were token gestures. His interest was in making
l 101 RAM chips in the other section of Intel's only factory on Bowers Avenue in
Santa Clara.
Noyce and Computer Games
Bob Noyce was a clever, somewhat silent, gray-haired guy who mostly wore a
white lab coat to cover his casual demeanor. At first, I must admit that I liked him
because he was a pilot. But, there is one fun experience that I had with Bob, and
this is not intended in any way to put him down, as I admired him greatly for all his
contributions.
One engineer at Intel in 1972 had developed a graphics chip set that controlled a little
triangular space ship. It mimicked the game of "Space Wars" that had traditionally
operated on DEC minicomputers.
Space Wars worked like this. You control the velocity and direction of this graphics
"space ship" using keyboard control. The ship operated under those Keplar's Laws
of Motion around a "sun" that would pull it in if your spaceship came too close. I
thought that it was a good idea for a commercial consumer game.
Later, I used my 4004 briefcase computer to build a simple game of "Nim" that
used the 4004's LEDs. Stan Mazor, one of Bob's gurus, suggested we approach
Noyce with the idea of making game computers. This was in 1973, before such
things were popular. Noyce peered at the LEDs blinking away on my 4004. He
looked at Stan and me and said, bluntly, that the future is in digital watches, not in
computer games.
Computer Connections 47