IP: MEA CULPA! History of 8008, early Intel uPs, etc.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 16:47:29 -0700
> From: John Wharton <wharton () shasta Stanford EDU>
> To: dave () farber net
>
>
> Dave--
>
> Sigh.  It would appear I inadvertently opened a huge can of worms last
> week.  And that my first effort to identify and corral the worms caused
> the can to rupture further.  I fear we now find ourselves swimming in a
> worm stampede.
>
> I'm refering to your posting of an announcement sent out by Dennis
> Allison for a colloquium to be held at Stanford on May 15, in which Stan
> Mazor is scheduled to give a talk on current issues in photolithography.
>
> Lest anyone infer otherwise, **I** am the individual who wrote the
> biographical sketch that has caused so much consternation.  To the
> extent that some of your readers may feel the announcement is incorrect
> or misleading, I want the record to be clear that neither Dennis nor
> Stan was responsible for any of the content which is now being
> questioned.
>
> Mea culpa!!!  The fault and the blame are entirely mine.
>
> Perhaps some background is in order: I help co-coordinate the Stanford
> EE380 colloquium with Prof. Allison.  The speaker originally scheduled
> for May 15 was forced to cancel due to circumstances beyond his control.
> It was my responsibility to find a replacement.
>
> Due to another misunderstanding (again, my fault!), a possible back-up
> speaker also fell through.  So as of the afternon of May 8 -- seven days
> before show-time -- we found ourselves with no one scheduled to cover
> the May 15 slot .
>
> At that point I gave Stan Mazor a call to see if he'd be willing to step
> in and save Stanford's butt.  His company (Numerical Technologies Inc.)
> is doing some fascinating work with high-resolution photolithography,
> work I thought would interest our students.
>
> After much wheedling and calling in of favors, Stan graciously agreed to
> fill the May 15 opening himself.  In the interest of time he immediately
> emailed me an abstract and brief biographical sketch.
>
> What Stan wrote about himself consisted just of the following:
>
>       Stanley Mazor is Director of Customer Services at
>       Numerical Technologies, Inc. in San Jose, a company
>       which provides services in advanced photolithography.
>
> That was it.  He said nothing about any past involvement with Intel,
> much less the role he played in the developing the 4004, 8080, or any
> other Intel microprocessors.  For sure he said nothing about the 8008.
>
> Perhaps I should have left things at that.  But I've know Stan for more
> than 25 years (in the 1970s we both worked at Intel as Application
> Engineers, and both played roles in defining some of Intel's early
> microcomputer products) so I took it upon myself to expound somewhat on
> Stan's overly-abbreviated bio.  I drew on my long friendship with Stan,
> my general knowledge of the industry and its history, and other
> correspondence and materials that can be found on the web.
>
> The embellished bio I compiled was the one posted to the class web site.
> Dennis picked up the posting and emailed it to memebers of the Stanford
> community.  A copy found its way to you, Dave; you posted it to the IP
> list on Friday; and it would seem a number of your readers have since
> taken offense.  The rest, as they say, is history.
>
> I should, perhaps, have passed a draft of my rewritten bio past Mr.
> Mazor for approval before posting it, but in the interest of time did
> not do so.  Most likely he did not even know what the bio said, or that
> I'd edited it, until all the excitement developed on your list.
>
> (He may still not know; I've had no contact with Mr. Mazor since
> Wednesday afternoon.  I'm hoping he'll find some humor in the situation,
> and not use this flare-up to cancel out his speaking date!  :-)
>
> Again, though, if anyone was upset by the posting, it's me they should
> be angry at, not Mr. Mazor or Prof. Allison.
>
> ====
>
> Now, having said all that, I'd like to comment that it's still not clear
> to me how or why all this furor arose.  The upcoming colloquium will
> discuss photolithography, not the history of microprocessors at Intel.
> There was nothing in the abstract discussing who invented what, when, or
> for whom.  There was absolutely no mention of the 8008.
>
> My mistake, apparently, was in saying Stan prepared architecture specs
> for the industry's first microprocessors.  Perhaps the worm-can would
> have remained closed had I added a qualifier or chosen a different
> adjective, alluding to "some of the industry's first microprocessors" or
> "Intel's first microprocessors" or "the industry's first commercially-
> viable processors" or "processors including the 4004 and 8080 but not
> including the 8008, which grew out of a design developed by Datapoint".
>
> Or I might have added a footnote to head off the conflict that seems to
> arise whenever anyone claims credit for designing any aspect of any
> successful product -- namely that complex systems can be viewed at many
> levels of abstraction.  In this case, e.g., one might identify a
> microprocessor's programming model; its instruction set; its
> microarchitecture; its gate-level implementation; its pinout; its bus
> interface; or its system-level design architecture.
>
> The individual responsible for each level may see himself as developing
> part of the product's "architecture".  They may all be correct.  The
> fact that someone was involved in one particular level of an engineering
> design is not meant to dishonor or slight the contributions of other
> engineers who may have worked on the system at other levels.
>
> But that seems like overkill, to go to such lengths to clarify one
> clause of one sentence of one paragraph of a brief biographical sketch
> accompanying an overdue lecture announcement -- especially considering
> that the topic of the talk is unrelated to the clause in question.
>
> ===
>
> Now, it's my understanding that Stan Mazor did indeed play a role in
> preparing specifications for various aspects of the 4004 and 8080
> product architectures (but perhaps not the 8008), and that he *IS* a
> co-holder of a patent on at least one of those parts.  That's all I'd
> intended to say, and I haven't read anything posted by anyone that
> sought to refute that.
>
> I shall now reread the many replies prompted by the original class
> posting, and would like to reserve the right to correct any factual
> errors that emerge.  In the mean time, Dave, I wish to again apologize
> to Stan, Dennis, and any of your other readers who may have taken
> offense, and to again thank Stan for being willing to step into the
> breech when Stanford was desperately in need of a last-minute speaker
> replacement.  No good deed goes unpunished, it would appear.
>
> Thank you, Dave, for letting me add this to the historical record.
>
>   --John Wharton

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