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The transistor group split into
consumer, computer, and power groups and I went to the computer group
headed by Bob Lohman (he has to be part of your history since he was a
major contributor to the Princeton effort). The computer transistor
business - originally based on the 2N404 went to hell as a business while
soaring technically. The 2N404 was a version of the 2N139 pellet. It was
packaged in a welded case (TO-5) since package size wasn't that critical
and was characterized and spec'd for switching rather than small signal
applications. It was part of Dr. Blicher's responsibility but the engineer
in charge was Ernest Vanderveer who left RCA to build a career at IBM (he
died a few years ago). Our group was disbanded and a splinter advanced
development group was formed to work on integrated circuits. I was manager
of the device work here and Bernie Vonderschmitt (Xilinx Master) had the
applications uner Lohman. We manufactured the first CMOS IC's (which was
the basis for my IEEE Fellow nomination).
I transfered to the Solid State
Technology Center (an advanced development function) and was responsible
for the 1802 CMOS microprocessor program driven by our VP (Gerry Herzog)
and based on the creativity and drive of Andy Dingwall) as well as some of
the device work necessary to make electronic TV tuning possible.
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