Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder and former chairman of Intel Corporation, the California semiconductor chip maker that helped give Silicon Valley its name, achieving the kind of industrial dominance once held by the giant American railroad or steel companies of another age, died on Friday at his home in Hawaii. He was 94.His death was announced by Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. No cause was specified.Along with a handful of colleagues, Mr. Moore could claim credit for bringing laptop computers to hundreds of millions of people and embedding microprocessors into everything from bathroom scales, toasters and toy fire engines to cellphones, cars and jets.Mr. Moore had wanted to be a teacher but could not get a job in education. He later called himself an “accidental entrepreneur, because he became a billionaire as a result of an initial $500 investment in the fledgling microchip business, which turned electronics into one of the world’s largest industries.And it was he, his colleagues said, who saw the future. In 1965, in what became known as Moore’s Law, he pr …
