Dissent, “Treacherous Eight” & the Birth of the Silicon Valley

 

                                         

18 September, in a way is celebrated as a birthday of sorts for the Silicon Valley in the US of A. It was on this day (September 18) in 1957, eight brilliant minds - Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Gene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts - who were working with a genius Nobelist, William Shockley in the Shockley Semiconductor company, resigned en masse to chart their own future. It was this historic decision which paved the way for the birth of what we now call as the Silicon Valley. The eight of them were collectively dubbed as ‘treacherous eight’ by their boss, William Shockley, an ‘erratic, mistrustful, and impatient boss’. Shockley was suspicious of his employees and went to an idiotic extent of spying on them by hiring detectives and sometimes asking them to take a lie-detector tests. It was therefore no wonder that eight of his best employees decided to call it quits.

Shockley was a brilliant scientist who had served for long with the Bell Labs and one of his most significant achievements at the Bell Labs was the transistor. It is pertinent to note that the computers of that time - ENIAC - used power hungry and bulky vaccum tubes which often times blew out due to extreme heat leading to the breakdown in the functioning of the devices. The discovery of the transistor effect and the subsequent mass production of the small transistors paved the way for a transformational change in the electronics industry. The market impact of William Shockley’s research at the Bell Labs can be understood with just one just example - The Sony Corporation. This Japanese company, which is now a global leader in the consumer electronics industry, owes its success to the Ball Labs transistors using which Sony began manufacturing radio transistors to make an international market presence for the Sony products. In recognition of his research, William Shockley was awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics which he shared with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".

Bell Labs knew the market potential of the discovery of the transistor effect and therefore they organised an international demonstration of how their new device - transistor- could replace the power hungry Vacuum tubes and also reduce the size of the computers and make them more reliable, besides being economical. One of the beneficiaries of their discovery was Sony which helped Japan to become the consumer electronics leader in international market. Shockley therefore was expecting a reward from Bell Labs, which was commensurate with the market potential of his discovery. Unfortunately, the management of the Bell Labs did not entertain Shockley’s demand. Unhappy with the treatment that he was getting in Bell Labs, Shockley decided to part ways with his company and start his own semiconductor company. Until then, it is important to note that most of the business enterprises were mostly located in the east coast in US including Bell Labs, which was located in New Jersey. Shockley decided that he will not only quit Bell Labs but will move to the other side - the west coast, to establish his own company far away from the Bell Labs.

Shockley founded the Shockley Semiconductor company in 1955 with an objective to work on semiconductors and to build transistors. He managed to obtain funds for his new venture from Beckmann Instruments. Shockley Semiconductor opened its business in 1955 at Palo Alto, California, near Stanford University, which is now at the heart of the Silicon Valley. Shockley knew that if his company was to succeed he would need the best of minds. Moreover, Shockley had a knack for identifying the best of talent. He scouted for the best talent in the universities and managed to put together a team of highly talented young men to work for his company. His team was referred to as the ‘greatest collection of electronic geniuses’ ever assembled under one roof.

Shockley Semiconductor became the first High Technology company in what would become the Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, things did not go well for the company from the beginning. Most of the brilliant young men hired personally by Shockley were actually attracted to the the glamor of working under the genius scientist, Shockley - the co-creator of the first transistor. Unfortunately, that was not to be. During those early days there was limited talent with specialised semiconductor knowledge in the market, and among those talent, the best of it was working with Shockley. The researchers working under Shockley faced a myriad of challenges. They were never given a free hand to work on their passion in the frontiers of the semiconductor technology. Their preference to work with silicon semiconductors was rejected by Shockley. They were constantly heckled by Shockley with micro-management, impatience, and skepticism. Moreover, Shockley’s paranoia of internal mutiny by his genius employees made him to resort to extreme measures. He hired detectives to spy on his employees and often put them to lie detector tests. Shockley had no sense of professionalism and his employees saw him as an incompetent businessman. The constant outburst of Shockley on his employees were a cause for mounting friction. The resulting work environment in the company, which was to work in the state of the art research field, was contemptuous, stressful, and stifling. What would happen next would give rise to perhaps the most influential birth of a tech giant companies in late 1950s

Among the people who were continuing to be ill treated at the Shockley Semiconductors were the ‘traitorous eight’. These eight best minds (Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Gene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts), who would become famously known as "the traitorous eight", went on to form their own company the Fairchild Semiconductors, which ushered in unprecedented growth and innovation and laid a strong foundation and a culture of innovation in the Silicon Valley. The description given by Arthur Rock, a Venture Capitalist, defines the nature of the eight people who revolted against Shockley to found their own company. “These were, by their résumés, very superior people. And I thought, gee, maybe there is something here, something more valuable than just being an employee.” - Arthur Rock, Venture Capitalist.

One fine day on a hot summer morning in San Francisco in 1957, the eight of the most talented young minds working for Shockley Semiconductors convened for a clandestine meeting at the Clift Hotel. They gathered over breakfast in the famed Redwood Room, a bastion of the city’s old guard. One of them was Robert Noyce, an MIT genius engineer, who is also to be credited for the invention of the Integrated Chip, for which Jack Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize. Robert Noyce was the leader they needed. Noyce was initially not keen to revolt against Shockley and leave his company since he had a young family to care for. However, the remaining seven of the traitorous eight persuaded Noyce to join them for creating a new company in a new field based on nothing more than combined knowledge, faith, ideas, and passion. The result was the formation of Fair Child Semiconductor company.

It was on September 19, 1957, a day after these eight brilliant minds left Shockley Semiconductors company, that they signed on a dollar bill promising to establish their own company. Their startup, Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, went on to develop some of the most important innovations in 20th century electronics technology and sowed seeds that spawned Silicon Valley and changed the world. In the formation of their new company the eight of them were assisted by Arthur Rock, who later formed one of the first West Coast venture capital firms. The eight men raised $1.38 million from East Coast−based Fairchild Camera & Instrument Corporation. Their timing was impeccable. This was the time when USA was lagging far behind their Cold War rivals the Soviet Union in every space venture and it was time for the US to recoup the loss of leadership to the Soviet Union. This resulted in the military contractors engaged in crash programs to miniaturize and improve the reliability of aerospace electronic systems. Fairchild founders identified this as an opportunity for a new kind of silicon transistor to serve these applications.

In just five months they outfitted an R&D facility in Palo Alto, developed new processes and equipment, and introduced a range of new transistors which found instant acceptance in the space market. Fairchild’s rapid growth in revenue, number of employees, and impact on the local community can be compared to that of Google 40 years later. This extraordinary level of success was built on revolutionary insights by three co-founders—Jean Hoerni, Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore and amplified by what is called as a start-up and innovation culture with the best of creative engineers and scientists. Fair Child continued to innovate and churn out new products and services all through the 1960s. Fairchild scientists pioneered reliable metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) production and also patented the all-important complementary MOS (CMOS) technology which is so fundamental to mainstream chip manufacturing today. Fairchild also developed analog chips and the most famous among them is µA709 operational amplifier (op-amp), which was developed in 1965. This IC established a mass market for analog devices and a highly profitable business unit for Fairchild. Fairchild alumni started many important analog IC companies including Linear Technology and Maxim.\

The Fairchild company grew from twelve to twelve thousand employees in no time and was soon raking in some $130 million a year. Led by Robert Noyce, the company introduced what has become a distinctly "Californian" style of management, complete with casual clothing and laid back atmosphere. Fairchild was the seedbed for a great industrial complex, as over the years many of the founders left to form other companies. Dubbed the "Fairchildren," these defectors helped Silicon Valley grow into the semiconductor ‘Mecca’ it has grown to become today.

According to journalist Michael Malone, “Fairchild Semiconductor was a company of legend – perhaps the most extraordinary collection of business talent ever assembled in a startup company. If Fairchild had a corporate culture it could only be described as volatility incarnate... brilliant young engineers and marketers working long days, and partying long nights... And somehow in the middle of it all, they also managed to invent the integrated circuit, the defining product of the late 20th century, and in the process helped to create the modern world”.

The management style that emerged from this culture differed from the conventional, bureaucratic, almost feudal ethos of the East Coast companies. Youth, inexperience, undying spirit, passion, a diverse mix of immigrants from across Europe and Asia, particularly from India, a tolerance for risk-taking, and a strong engineering discipline evolved into a formula that was replicated across the Valley. This culture now spans to successor companies such as AMD, Intel, and National Semiconductor and on to Apple, Atari, Netscape and Sun and also to Cisco, Google, Facebook and beyond.

The Fairchild Semiconductor reached heights of influence in no time. But then as it happens with most companies Fairchild too was beset by inept absentee management woes. Key people started leaving the company to chart their own paths and to found new companies of their own. Among those who left the Fair Child to form their own companies included their founder, the MIT genius engineer, Robert Noyce. He co-founded Intel with Gordon Moore in 1968. This process haemorrhaging key people continued with the company and those who left the company went on to found new semiconductor companies like Intel, AMD, National LSI Logic and many others. It is estimated by some that more than 400 companies can trace their roots to the Fairchild Semiconductor company, which was formed by those "Fairchild Eight" the most famous being Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who co-founded Intel Corp. in 1968.

Today, that culture which was created by the founders of Fair Child Semiconductors in the Silicon Valley continues unabated. And this culture is inextricably linked to Innovation and entrepreneurship and it is/was here that the so called ‘geeks’ work passionately in an informal work culture, alongside their unending and night partying- ‘to give birth to the future’. The origin of the raise and raise of this new knowledge culture in the Silicon Valley, where innovation is a norm, goes back to the decades of the 50s, 60s and 70s of the twentieth century. This tradition has continued to remain uninterruptible even today and the culture of innovation, creativity and birthing new technologies in the Silicon Valley has spread to far off places across the world including in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurugram in India.

The semiconductor industry was, is and will continue to be the engine that drives the Silicon Valley. It ushered the much heralded Information Revolution, the computers, cell phones, satellites, internet etc. and these new technologies, which owe their existence to the semiconductor industry have completely transformed our lives and collectively led us to the knowledge society and to what is termed the Fourth Industrial Revolution - IR4.0.

The history of the Silicon Valley therefore owes its Genesis to the dissent by the eight brilliant minds who left en-masse the Shockley Semiconductors company on this day to not only found their own company but also create a culture which thrives even today in the valley.

India has been immensely benefitted from this culture. Bangalored, a neologism, which became famous because of Barack Obama’s, (former American president) election address to the Buffalo audience, where he spoke on the dangers of the Buffalo (American) youngsters losing their jobs to their Bangalore counter parts in India, reminds us of the spin off benefits that the exponential growth of Silicon Valley in San Francisco Bay Area has brought for India, particularly to Bangalore which is considered to be the Silicon Valley of India. Let us owe it to those traitorous eight who made this possible.

Long live Creative culture which was birthed in the Valley to create more opportunities for India.

Eulogy for Frank Drake, the man who is immortalised by the Drakes Equation and SETI.

Eulogy for Frank Drake, the man who is immortalised by the Drakes Equation and SETI.

“It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow”. - Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard. 

 It is perhaps these prophetic words of Goddard that keeps many scientists engaged in what can be called an impossible task of finding answer to an elusive question, Are we alone in the universe? And one of the early astronomers who can be credited for trying to answer this question was Frank Drake. Frank Donald Drake, an astronomer who has been immortalised by an equation named after him - Drakes Equation - which he had advocated to initiate a dialog among ten astronomers who had gathered in a conference at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia in 1961, died earlier this month on September 2 at the age of 92.

The Drake Equation is now considered as one of the most famous equation / formula in scientific history. This formula was advocated by Drake early in his career - November 1961- soliciting a brain storming discussion with the ten best brains, including Carl Sagan, who had gathered, to discuss on an elusive question ; Are we alone in the universe? This meeting goes down in history as the first scientific meeting, which was devoted to SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). Frank Drake wrote an equation on the blackboard that took the difficult question of estimating the number of civilizations in the Galaxy and broke it down into a series of smaller, more manageable questions. Ever since, both astronomers and students have used Drake equation as a means of approaching the most challenging question: Are we alone in the universe? 

Speaking of this question, as per our understanding - with all the powerful scientific and technological tools in our arsenal - our Earth seems to be unique and perhaps it is the only place in the universe, which harbours biological life, as we know it today. The uniqueness of our planet reminds us of that famous book with that poetic out look for our earth - 'Pale Blue Dot' - written by Carl Sagan. Incidentally Carl Sagan was one of the ten astronomers in whose presence Drake wrote his famous equation on the black board. Sagan’s book was inspired by a pale blue dot image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990. 

In the unending expanse of our ever expanding universe, which harbours billions and billions of galaxies, including our very own Milky Way Galaxy, and each galaxy birthing billions of stars that include our very own life giving and life sustaining star - the Sun - which is just one among those billions of stars that make up our 'Akash Ganga' galaxy, our Sun, as we know it today, is perhaps the only known star in the universe, which cradles our life sustaining planet Earth, where life in its myriad forms and unending diversity has evolved on our pale blue planet. But then the pale blue dot also reminds us of how tiny we in the vast expanse of our cosmos, which necessarily leads to that curiosity of question, are we alone. This question has haunted astronomers and biologists for long and the beginning to guesstimate this preposterous question started with what now has become universal, the Drakes equation and with this equation Frank Donal Drake become synonymous with SETI, which has inspired many movies including the ones made in Bollywood - Hrithik starter Koi Mil Gaya.

Frank Donald Drake was born in Chicago on May 28, 1930, the oldest of three children. His father, Richard, was a chemical engineer, and his mother, Winnifred (Thompson) Drake, was a music teacher. Drake became excited about the possibility of extraterrestrial life as a child since he studied astronomy in school. He was also interested in chemistry and electronics.  After his schooling he enrolled at the Cornell University as an undergraduate and a participant in the Navy’s Reserve Office Training Corps. This entailed that Drake had to take up a naval assignment post his graduation with a bachelor's degree in engineering physics, which he completed in 1952. On completing his graduation, Drake was posted to the U.S.S. Albany where he was assigned the task of attending to the ship’s electronics. He served in the navy for three years as the electronics officer on the Navy cruiser - U.S.S. Albany, 

On completion of his assignment with the navy Drake joined the prestigious Harvard’s graduate school from where he obtained his master’s degree and a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1958. All through this period his interest in electronics served him well and further attracted him to radio astronomy, a relatively new subject. Around this time, in 1958, there was a old Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory in the Green Bank, which was hardly known. However, in order to start some research at the fledging observatory, the Director of the observatory decided to purchase a radio telescope “kit” from the Blaw-Knox Corporation. This was to be a make shift arrangement which would pave the way for building a larger antenna, based on some early research. Drake joined this project and a year later, the assembled telescope, with its 85 foot reflector, was outfitted for observations and Drake began his research program with this telescope. This was the time when Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, was transformed into the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) a newly constituted body. Drake began using radio telescopes to listen for signals from nearby stars. He identified two near by stars for his early examination and focused his attention on Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, each about a dozen light years away. This project was dubbed Project Ozma and it is considered as the first attempt under project SETI. 

For several weeks Drake alternately pointed the telescope at these two stars aiming to receive some signals from his commercial receiver, which was designed for shortwave listening. He chose to look at ‘frequencies adjacent to the radio emission line (1420 MHz) of neutral hydrogen, on the grounds that this naturally produced line would be known to any technically proficient civilization, and therefore would serve as a marker for the guidance of societies who might wish to make contact’.  Incidentally unknown to Drake, a paper was published in 1959 by two Cornell University physicists who had postulated that anyone with technology that was at least as advanced as our own could send detectable radio signals. 

The project to detect possible signals from the two near by stars by Drake became the first, modern SETI experiment, which was named Project Ozma. Although Drake was not successful in detecting any extraterrestrial signals, this project caught the attention of astronomers from across the world, including the astronomers at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The NAS suggested to the Director NRAO to task Drake with organising a small conference to brain storm on the possibility of trying to find evidence of ‘intelligence’ in the cosmos. This resulted in a group of about ten prominent scientists and engineers who gathered for attending this conference in 1961 in Green Bank. In order to kick start the brain storming discussion in this conference, Drake came out with an idea and wrote a simple equation, consisting of seven constant terms whose product would be an estimated number of galactic societies, who perhaps could produce signals that could be received and interpreted by their observations. This formulation has become known as the Drake Equation. Incidentally many people say that this equation is cited as the second most-famous equation in science (after Einstein’s E=mc2). 

Incidentally the worlds prestigious space agency NASA too joined in the early efforts of SETI project in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the projects which NASA supported as a part of the SETI project included Project Orion, the Microwave Observing Project, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and Toward Other Planetary Systems. However, since the Congress was not keen on supporting this project the SETI program was cancelled by NASA in 1993. By then the interest in SETI and aliens among the masses had only increased courtesy films like the Star Wars and many more. 

Before the closure of the SETI project by NASA, Drake was also involved in co-designing the Pioneer Plaque with the father daughter duo of Carl Sagan. This plaque was the first physical message, which was sent into the space. It was designed in such a way that the underpinnings of the message may be interrupted by any of the scientifically advanced extraterrestrial life forms, out there in the universe. Drake was also involved in writing the first interstellar message which was transmitted deliberately from the Earth for some intelligence out there in the universe to intercept it. 

Although NASA announced the official closure of the SETI project the interest in this project did not come down and the SETI project is continuing as a private entity in California even today. Drake had became the president of the SETI Institute after its founding in 1984.  Drake He continued to promote SETI, even after his official retirement in 2010 at the age of eighty.  During his retirement when asked whether he will be associate with the SETI project, Drake said, “I’m never going to retire from SETI.” Drake has influenced a generation of young astronomers and students who have now become SETI practitioners. Although in his life time - Drakes lifetime - there have been no scientific evidence whatsoever, which points to the existence of ET life, but then the efforts of SETI scientists may someday deliver that seemingly improbable news that the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ may have company some where in the universe true to the prophetic words of Robert Goddard ‘It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. 

Rest in peace Frank Donald Drake.

Images courtesy : Wiki Commons and Project SETI.

Clarence Saunders & his Revolutionary Super Market - Piggly Wiggly

 

Super markets - which are now a norm - have mushroomed all across the world, India included. The genesis for the supermarkets stem from a remarkable innovation that came from an young American (born in poverty) - Mr Clarence Saunders - who introduced the first ever super market to the world - the Piggly Wiggly. It was on this day - 6 September, 1916, that the first ever truly self-service grocery store of the world was opened with great fanfare in Memphis, Tennessee in US. Piggly Wiggly store was completely different from any other contemporary grocery stores of the time. The store had wooden shopping baskets (plastic ones are used in current times) open shelves, aisles for the movement of the customers, and no delivery boys to choose the products for the customer. The customer to the Piggly Wiggly was welcomed and s/he had a complete freedom to choose what to buy her leisure, walking through the aisles of the store and check out paying for what s/he picked to buy – all of which were previously unheard of. The rest, what they say is history.

The humble neighbourhood किराना (kirana) shop (grocery shop), which most of my generation grew up with, has changed with time as a result of Clarence Saunders and so also with technological advancements. It was not until the era of economic liberalisation in India that the humble kirana shops remained the prime movers of serving grocery and such other utilitarian food items to their customers. My generation and so also those who live in the hinterland of the country continue to depend on the humble neighbourhood kirana shop for their grocery needs. The Kirana Shop - grocery stores of that time - encouraged their customers to prepare a list of the groceries that they wish to buy and this hand written list - on a small piece of paper often times on the back of a used envelope or a newspaper etc. - was required to be presented to the boys manning the kirana shop, standing behind the owner who would be seated on a chair controlling cash box. These boys would then gather the groceries and other materials listed on the piece of paper from the store shelves. Although the customers did have the facility to see some small quantity of samples what they wish to buy, but most often they had literally no choice to touch and feel the product they wished to buy.

Clarence Saunders, a dynamic and innovative man, who was serving as a sales man in a whole sale grocery store in US, was expected to increase the sales. This mandated Saunders to travel extensively and meet retailers hold discussions and motivate them to place orders with his whole sale store. During this period, Saunders watched very carefully each of the retail shops and how they are functioning and how their owners are managing their stores and how they interact with their customers. He was convinced that the method followed by all the retail stores resulted in wasted time and expense. He also observed that often times the customers were expressing their unhappiness for not being able to personally see and select what grocery items they wish to buy for their homes. He, therefore, came up with an unheard-of solution that would revolutionize the entire grocery industry. He developed a way for shoppers to “serve themselves” and the result was the founding of the first self-service super market concept which we now take for granted. He strangely called his grocery shop Piggly Wiggly, a rhythmic sounding name, which also speaks of his interest in poetry. The supermarkets and the ultramodern stores, which we see today - with an ever-improving technology embedded in these super markets - owe their genesis to a journey of their evolution that began with the outstanding innovation by Clarence Saunders, who founded his revolutionary concept of self service in the retail market.

Clarence Saunders was born on August 9, 1881 in a poor family in Virginia to his parents Abraham Warwick and Mary Gregory Saunders. Mary was the second wife of Abraham. Clarence was born when his father was 47 and his mother just 26. As fate would have it his mother died when he was 6 years. This meant that Clarence had no formal education. He went to school only for two years and the rest of his learning is all self-taught. He started working for a shop when he was just 12 years of age at 4 Dollars a month remuneration. He was expected to clean the lanterns and the wicks used in these old and decorative lanterns. He worked so passionately on his job and wanted to be the best lantern cleaner in the city. His vision to be the best in the market was taking roots at this young age. He worked in this shop from early morning to late night. Impressed by his commitment and his impeccable workmanship, his boss doubled his remuneration in just a month. The character to excel in whatever you do started taking shape in the young Saunders. He then changed many workplaces, each time gaining not just the experience but also increased remuneration. Even as he was working so very hard, he found time to read books, particularly literature and had up made up his mind to be self-taught. He also learnt maths – arithmetic - which he thought was important to succeed in life. This would serve him well in his career. At age 14, Saunders started working part time in a grocery store.

Armed with his experience of working in a retail store, Saunders soon found a job in a whole sale market at age 19. In 1904, at 23, he moved to Memphis and landed up with a good job in Shanks Philips and Company as a salesman in the whole sale market at 85 Dollars a month. All through this period he had continued to be self-taught including taking keen interest in literature and poetry. His love for books drew him closer to be his wife – Caroline Amie Walker who he married on 6 October 1903. His wife too loved books, particularly poetry. He wrote poetry for his wife. In just two years of his joining Shanks Philips and Company, his salary was increased to 125 Dollars a month. This gave him space to improve his living life style and provided space and time for his entrepreneurial ambitions. While serving in this company he made fair number of notes and observations on how the retail stores work. He had also established good rapport with many of the retail stores. In fact, he had motivated an organised movement of the retailers who had collectively formed a store with all their stakes in this store.

Having made a name for himself as an expert grocery wholesaler, Saunders decided to embark on a plan of revolutionizing the grocery store - common supermarket. He believed that there must be a better way to serve the customers. He therefore, envisaged removing unnecessary material handling boys – clerks - creating elaborate aisle displays and rearranging the store to force customers to view all of the merchandise. His experience and innovative mind helped him found a new revolutionary concept, of self-service shopping in retail market. All these features were some of the characteristics of Saunders’ Piggly Wiggly stores, which was opened on this very day, 6 September, 1916.  It became   a ground-breaking enterprise that changed the face of retail market. When Piggly Wiggly opened its doors in Memphis, Tennessee on September 6, 1916, it became the first truly modern American supermarket. Though the Piggly Wiggly Store was in complete variance from its competitors, the style became the standard for the modern supermarket, and in 1922, just six years after it was opened, Piggly Wiggly had grown into 1,200 stores in 29 states.

Until the beginning of the Piggly Wiggly stores, customers were typically forced to wait behind a counter to request items stored beyond their reach and view. With limited employees manning the counters, often times, the customers had to wait a while for their turns to get what they wished. If other customers were in line, people had to wait even longer. In the newly opened "cafeteria grocery", Saunders moved the stockroom into the front of the store and allowed customers to roam the aisles and select their own groceries, the idea of which was truly revolutionary in 1916.

Saunders innovation, the Piggly Wiggly, a strangely sounding name, turned the then existing retail market model on its head. Shoppers no longer needed to be at the mercy of the grocer. They were invited into the store, handed a shopping basket, and left free to move around the grocery store to touch and feel their chosen items and know the price of each of the items. Shoppers to Piggy Wiggly could pick and choose what they liked at their own pace and fill their cart and checkout of the stores paying for whatever they selected. This may not sound very impressive now, but imagine this concept one hundred six years back when no one had ever thought of self-service grocery shopping the way Saunders thought of it. Commemorating the centenary of Piggly Wiggly innovation the TIME magazine paid tributes by stating “Piggly Wiggly was the original grocery store, which not only introduced grocery carts, but also price-marked items, employees in uniform, and the supermarket franchise model.”

Piggly Wiggly permanently changed the face of grocery shopping not only in America but around the world. When people asked Saunders why he gave his grocery store such a funny little name, he is reported to have said, "So that people will ask that very question." It seems to have worked, because even after the centenary of the Piggly Wiggly stores, people still ask the reason for naming it with a strangely looking name. Saunders was also a master marketing man and the launch of his new store was truly memorable and one could quite easily compare his launch with the launch of the Apple products by their founder late Steve Jobs. Saunders grand opening of his first Piggly Wiggly in 1916 had included a jazz band on top of one of the refrigerator units, a beauty contest, flowers for the ladies, and balloons for children. History was made, and reportedly several thousand people showed up to witness Saunders self-service grocery shopping.

Piggly Wiggly store was an immediate financial success -- quicker for customers, less labour intensive for the shopkeeper, the new format allowed multiple customers to shop at the same time, and led to the previously unknown phenomenon of impulse shopping. Saunders soon patented his self-service concept, and began franchising Piggly Wiggly stores. Within five years, the chain had more than a thousand stores, and was the nation's largest grocery retailer. Sadly, during the Great Depression, Saunders was forced to sell the company after a long financial battle with Wall Street investors. He went through bad times in his business including losing his Piggly Wiggly and starting new ventures, which initially succeeded but later failed.  Having built and lost two major fortunes, Saunders died on October 15, 1953. Leaving behind a legacy which will remain etched in the annals of history and he will be remembered as the man who brought the retail store into the twentieth century.

On this day which happens to be the 106^th anniversary of the first super market – Piggly Wiggly, we must remember that we go to a supermarket, we must spare a thought for Clarence Saunders innovation, which made these self-service markets possible. them possible. Long live Innovation, which is more than mere conversion of knowledge into a workable technology. It implies an S&T-led solution that benefits economy and human society and today when we are celebrating our seventy five years of our independence – Azadi Ka Amrut Mohotsav – it is time for us to invest more in the field of science, technology and innovation as we aim towards becoming the second largest economy of the world much before the targeted year, 2047.

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