You can only properly assess and appreciate the impact sufficient to assign 'legend' status to an individual or institution retroactively, decades hence from the actions that elevated them there.
> I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them. > - Andy Bernard
it's always 5pm somewhere for someone.
But many other such figures achieved 'legendary' status while they were very much alive and in their prime: Edison, Ford, Bell, Wright Bros, Disney, Carnegie, Einstein, Oppenheimer, etc.
Moore himself was a member of an elite crew and one of Shockley's (the inventor of the transistor) "Traitorous Eight" which spun out from their former mentor to join Fairchild Semiconductor before all of them spun out from that enterprise to found their own companies and in the process create Silicon Valley proper.