Mannerisms

When Moore was running the Fairchild laboratory, and Sporck was head of manufacturing, they went to the annual sales meeting at The Hawaiian Village Hotel in Hawaii.

They arrived in the evening and decided to walk along the beach to the conference hotel where they were due, as Sporck puts it, "to make some inspirational remarks".

There was a line of hotels along the beach, each with a waterfront cocktail lounge, and they stopped at the first one and had a pair of Mai Tais.

They tried to walk along the beach, but found a fence going down into the water. So they waded into the sea, walked round the end of fence, and had another couple of Mai Tais in the next hotel.

It turned out that each hotel was separated from the next by similar fences which went down into the sea.

Undeterred, they repeated the process for each hotel - a brace of Mai Tais, a walk round the next fence in the sea, into the next bar and so on - all the way down the beach.

"We finished our journey", recalls Sporck, "by walking up the centre of the main street, or perhaps weaving is a better word than walking, in an advanced state of inebriation , in our soaking wet business suits and our squishing shoes and stockings."