Gordon Moore, who made the semiconductor industry's most famous prediction in
In his magnificent 'History of Semiconductor Engineering', Bo Lojek describes how
In 1961, Bob Norman, Head of the Device Evaluation Section at Fairchild suggested to Moore, the Head of R&D, that he should file a patent application for semiconductor memory.
More found "such an idea so ridiculous that filing the application would be a waste of company money."
Ironically, 35 years later
Perhaps he was already planning Intel and didn't want them having to pay royalties to Fairchild ? :-)