Locator: 48687INTEL.
I may flesh this blog out later, but for now, just a memo for myself.
After reading the history of Intel, I really, really, really hope Intel can recover and become the successful company and American icon it once was. I have no plans to invest in INTC but that's fine.
Intel was first founded in Mountain View, California. The company was incorporated there on July 18, 1968. Initially, they operated out of a conference room in the old Union Carbide building.
Intel Corporation was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, along with investor Arthur Rock. Robert Noyce was an American physicist and entrepreneur known for co-founding Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. He is also credited with developing the first monolithic integrated circuit, or microchip. Gordon Moore, an American businessman and engineer, also co-founded Intel and is famous for proposing Moore's Law.
A lot of incredible history.
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The Book Page
This will probably be short-lived but limiting one's library to just three best books on any one subject is one way to cull a library or improve one's understanding of a given subject.
For me, once I got the "bug" with regard to semiconductors, I have benefited greatly by reading these three books simultaneously:
- The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created The Modern World, Simo Winchester, c. 2018.
- The Innovators: How A Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson, c. 2015.
- The Story of Semiconductors, John Orton, Oxford Press, c. 2004.
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The Movie Page
Last night, on a whim, I watched The Conversation with Gene Hackman. I can't recall if I had seen that movie in its entirety but something, I don't know what, something suggested to me this past week I had to watch the movie. So, last night, the move was "free" on Amazon Prime and watched it. I can't recommend the movie to my extended family members, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Would I watch it again? Maybe once every year. I might watch it again before I ever watch Apocalypse Now again, and Apocalpse Now is on my list of fifteen favorite movies.
Well, lo and behold, after watching The Conversation last night, it appears in a book review on this weekend's WSJ section on books. Wow, such a coincidence.
From the link above:
When it comes to making a movie, directors have the big ideas, stars have the oversize salaries and studio executives have the loudly expressed opinions, but film editors know the most about process. They have to. In their often unheralded roles, editors are tasked not only with fashioning a story but discerning (and determining) a movie’s rhythm, mood and emotion.And, yes, I'll buy the book sight unseen. I think I have two books on Hollywood; this will be my third.
Few editors have practiced the art as skillfully or intelligently as Walter Murch, whose work includes Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979), Fred Zinnemann’s “Julia” (1977) and Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” (1996). He has also lent his ears to numerous productions as a widely acclaimed sound mixer and designer. For his efforts, he has been honored three times with Oscar wins.
Mr. Murch, 82, is very articulate on his thoughts and theories about his trade. I have interviewed him on several occasions, including for a 2012 dual-profile of him and the director Philip Kaufman. He is the author or contributor to several books, the latest and best of which is “Suddenly Something Clicked.”
The author-editor’s thoughtfulness, candor and wonkish attention to detail is on abundant display in the present volume, which is split into two sections—one on film editing, the other on sound design—but which is governed, throughout, by a rich, multidisciplinary density that at times feels free-associational. “Theory mixes with experience, and practical tips jostle between metaphysics and neurology,” Mr. Murch writes. He offers extended exegeses on everything from the concept of “persistence of vision” to the merits of standing up, rather than sitting down, at an editing machine.
It is a joy to encounter someone who has thought so deeply about his vocation, up to and including defining his preferred terms. To wit, Mr. Murch finds “montage” more apropos than “editing.” He explains that “a plumber will monte together the pipes of a house, just as a film editor will plumb together the shots of a film, and this construction—this montage—of a first assembly is the primary foundation of all the editor’s subsequent work.” He stresses the difference between what a book or periodical editor does and what a film editor does. Instead of refining an already extant product, as do those in the former professions, a film editor “produces the first version, painstakingly constructing it over many weeks (or months!) from thousands of shots, guided by the screenplay and the director’s notes.”
Mr. Murch points out, for instance, that his work with Mr. Coppola—who tended to shoot long, plotless “chains of events” like the wedding scene in “The Godfather” (1972)—led the editor to tackle other scenes as though they were documentaries. “I am following the story in the script, of course, but a certain dash of this documentary way of thinking seems to open up the potential in the material, even (and especially) in the accidental parts.” He describes as eye-opening a cut made by an assistant editor on “The Conversation” that skipped a step in the on-camera action to arrive at an important moment more quickly. “I can think of no cut that better captures the essence of cinema editing, its ability to compress time, its storytelling efficiency, its metaphorical poetry,” writes Mr. Murch.
Committed cinephiles will have a similar feeling throughout this book, which both describes in great depth the assembly of “The Conversation,” in the absence of certain scenes that were planned but were never shot, and includes assertions of striking, almost aphoristic simplicity, including this insight about complex soundtracks: “It is just about possible to follow two conversations simultaneously, but not three.”