Chapter 57: I'm Truly Pragmatic!

Perhaps because of the upcoming San Francisco Electronics Exhibition in September, MOS, in the matter of establishing the new company, demonstrated remarkable efficiency. It was only on July 10th that Chuck Peddle had a phone conversation with Ethan Jones about the founding issues. By July 12th, the MOS team had already dispatched and arrived in San Francisco to select a location for the new company.

Since this company would be engaged in chip production and operations in California, their primary goal during formation was to find a facility capable of supporting chip manufacturing, along with warehouses for materials and products.

Ethan Jones originally thought that the process of finding a facility would be quite lengthy, given that chip production involves cutting-edge technology with high demands on the production environment.

However, the MOS team, after wandering around Silicon Valley for a few days, called Ethan Jones to inform him that they had identified a suitable factory. The location was in Mountain View, and they also wanted Ethan Jones, the co-owner of the company, to take a look.

This information surprised Ethan Jones a bit, but he also admitted that MOS had indeed shown him great respect, which made him happy. Upon reaching the location mentioned by them, Ethan found a factory occupying about two acres. This place used to be the site of a calculator company, but they relocated from California to Lower California after the oil crisis due to the skyrocketing production costs.

Since the previous company produced TTL, or transistors, their requirements for the factory were relatively high. Although it had been unused for a long time, Ethan just took a quick look inside, and while it was dusty, he acknowledged that cleaning it up would be much better than establishing a new factory.

"How much for this place?" Ethan Jones asked.

"It's very cheap, two hundred thousand dollars," replied the leader of the MOS team, a middle-aged man in a suit.

He was continuously stomping his feet at the moment, trying to shake off all the black dust from his pants.

"Considering the area of this factory, how many production lines can we fit?" Ethan Jones, with hands behind his back, acted like a foreman.

"If we use the Platinum Elmer's technology package, we can fit four production lines here," the leader replied without looking at any data.

Platinum Elmer was an instrument company in Massachusetts. In 1973, they invented the first projection aligner, which, when making CPUs, could project the mask image directly onto the wafer without direct contact, significantly increasing the CPU's yield from the previous 30% using Kodak technology to 78%, greatly reducing the production cost of CPUs.

Of course, the significant increase in efficiency meant that the equipment was expensive.

"So, is the company planning to buy four sets at once? Is two million enough?" Ethan asked.

The leader chuckled at this question and said, "Chuck and the others said it's not about the money but about face."

"The fact that Mr. Jones, who has no relationship with MOS 6502, can help the company clear legal obstacles for the sake of promoting computers. In this situation, the company won't let go of production. If this gets out, the entire tech community will mock us."

"Therefore, we have already communicated with Sequoia Capital. After the company successfully registers the purchase of equipment, we will use the newly ordered equipment as collateral for a mortgage. We'll set up four production lines here."

"Mr. Jones, what you need to do is wait."

'Clap, clap, clap~'

Ethan Jones clapped his hands, enjoying the feeling of being a boss who could effortlessly collect money.

Because...

The feeling of waiting to get paid was just fantastic!

At the same time, he was curious about the name of this new company.

And when he asked this question, the leader responsible for establishing the new company smiled and said, "Mr. Jones, our board of directors feels that this company emerged because of you, so the naming rights should be handed over to you."

"So straightforward?" Ethan Jones was somewhat surprised.

But after the surprise, he gladly accepted this privilege.

"Let's call it Chuck Peddle Inc., then."

This statement made the leader's eyes light up. "Using the name of a chip patentee for the company name? That's a good idea."

"I think no one would refuse to leave a name in history," he added.

Yes, that's exactly what Ethan Jones thought!

The world should remember those who changed it!

After confirming the address of the new company, the following events were not directly related to Ethan Jones.

Company registration, purchasing the factory, ordering equipment, and bank loans were handled by others. All Ethan Jones had to do was sign his name on various documents to ensure his interests. To safeguard his rights, he even had Uncle Thomas Johnson find a lawyer to review the documents.

As for why he didn't seek help from Stanford?

Simple!

Why use a sledgehammer to kill a chicken?

Perhaps the power of money was strong enough; in less than a week, Chuck Peddle Inc. was successfully registered by MOS and obtained the Federal Tax ID and Sales Tax Permit.

For patent registration, they adopted a temporary application method, filing for production first and formally applying later.

By the end of July, the ordered production lines had also arrived.

On August 1st, assembly was completed, and they began testing production.

With this fact in mind, Ethan Jones felt like he was walking on cloud nine!

MOS 6502 was the only chip in history to sell a billion units! What's twenty percent of the profit worth? Even if he earned one dollar per chip, he could easily pick up two hundred million! Although this profit would slowly materialize over time, it didn't matter, right?

Because this was much more secure than any federal pension!

"Darn! At twenty years old, I'm already living a sixty-year-old's life?"

"This life is just too darn comfortable!"

Looking at the share contract in his hand, Ethan Jones suddenly felt that the practical spirit of working three hours a day and occasionally working until the afternoon was also worth learning!

For example, right now, Ethan Jones could achieve all this by just waking up at eight in the morning and taking a break at noon!

Just as Ethan Jones was preparing to experience the retired life joyfully, on the morning of August 3rd, he was awakened by a loud shout. It was Aunt Linda's voice—

"Ethan!!!"

"Don't sleep!!!"

"Somebody's looking for you!!!"

The sudden call almost scared Ethan Jones half to death.

Rubbing his sleepy and puzzled eyes, he, with his messy hair, lazily descended the stairs.

"Linda, what's going on?"

He looked at his aunt in a daze, not understanding the situation.

Linda, who was tidying up the house, waved her hand casually, pointing to the door. "Someone's looking for you. Go see for yourself."

With these words, Ethan Jones yawned and walked out.

Just as he was pondering who could be so rude to wake him up early in the morning, at the door, the guy who was even more laid-back than him made Ethan wake up. "MFxxk! Steve, why are you here?"

Yes, the person who had come was Steve Jobs.