Gordon Moore - yes, he of transistor observation fame - came to the Computer History Museum last night. He sat. He chatted. He celebrated 40 years of being the most famous plotter on the planet. We ate cake.

The museum sits in Mountain View, California not far from where Moore got his start at the Shockley laboratory and where he and seven others concocted the idea for Fairchild Semiconductor.

Such trivia marks just the beginning of the semiconductor history tour Moore and his questioner fellow luminary Carver Mead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead) walked the audience through during a two-hour session.

It's hard to expect much original material to arise out of a semi-staged production meant to celebrate a 40-year-old "law" – one so often quoted and misquoted that it has become a type of IT conversation speed bump that one must throw out on certain occasions to seem coherent or relevant.

So what fresh items emerged from the evening?

Well, one of Moore's most impressive traits as a youngster appears to have been his penchant for explosives. The topic has nothing to do with transistor observations but everything to do with his character.

At around 11 years old, Moore dug into a neighbor's chemistry set.

"In those days, you would get some really neat stuff in them," he said. " You can't get that stuff anymore ... I was interested in the bangs ... the smokes."

After just a short time with the chem kit, Moore started producing "small production quantities" of nitroglycerin and dynamite.

"If you put a drop of nitroglycerin on filter paper and hit it with a hammer, it makes the loudest crack."

Moore celebrated this statement by holding up his hands, proving that all ten digits were still attached, and then blamed his need for hearing aids on the loud cracks.

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Things that go BOOM!

While a student at CalTech university, Moore would steer his love for explosives toward more academic pursuits. He surveyed fellow chemistry scholars and found that 80 per cent of them pursued science as a result of their passion for things that go BOOM!

"My proposition was that we should encourage (this interest in explosions) with children in order to alleviate the shortage of scientists."

Moore went on to elaborate on the early days at Intel, as the company searched for customers that could use "complete circuits in large volumes." Intel had trouble finding large firms to buy its products but did attract a customer making a blood analyzer and another creating an automatic chicken house - whatever that may be.

Back then, Moore thought things were going pretty well for Intel, while fellow executive Andy Grove saw things in a much more pessimistic light.

"I thought it was smooth as could be," he said. "Andy said it was the toughest time of his life and thought we were going to go under every week."

Grove's famous paranoia inspired a fierce competitive streak at Intel. One of the company's first internal campaigns was a plan code-named "Crush" to thwart Motorola.

"I am not sure we can say that these days," Moore joked, presumably in reference to Intel's past and current anti-trust battles with AMD.

For those who can't resist the Moore's law chatter, the Intel veteran noted that these days he refuses to predict chip improvements that stretch beyond the next two or three generations of processors.

Ever humble, Moore discounted the importance his law played on the IT industry.

"A lot of these things would have happened anyhow," he said. "I am sure if I hadn't plotted these curves, somebody else would have. I am not sure the industry would be much different now."

Mead put a more philosophical spin on the observation's importance.

"The wonderful thing about Moore's Law is that it's a tangible thing about belief in the future."

Moore who along with Intel has made billions from semiconductors summed up his run with the technology and the indirect effects of his law quite succinctly.

"It has been a marvelous business." ®

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