Julius Blank, a mechanical engineer who helped start a computer chip company in the 1950s that became a prototype for high-tech start-ups and a training ground for a generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, died on Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif.. He was 86.

His death was confirmed by Cynthia Small Blank, his daughter-in-law.

Mr. Blank was one of eight computer scientists who in 1957 founded the seminal Palo Alto company Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. He was one of only two in the group who had experience in manufacturing.

So after the scientists’ initial research to find an inexpensive way to make silicon computer chips — a breakthrough that persuaded an investor to stake them $1.5 million — the task of building the machinery to mass-produce them fell to Mr. Blank and another engineer in the group, Eugene Kleiner.

The two scrounged parts, improvised equipment and tooled a set of machines that essentially became the first assembly line for the basic building blocks of the electronic world: electronic circuits made from wafers of silicon, or silicon chips.