EARLY SEMICONDUCTOR DEVELOPMENT AT SHOCKLEY TRANSISTOR CORPORATION Gene Weckler
Biographic Note Mr. Gene P. Weckler has been active in semiconductor technology since the late 1950s, with a career that has taken him to such industry pioneering companies as Shockley Transistor Corporation, Fairchild Semiconductor, and EG&G Reticon. His first major work assignment after graduating with a BSEE from Utah State University in 1958 was as an Applications Engineer at Shockley Transistor Corporation, an historic company credited with many of the early important milestones in the development of semiconductors and Silicon Valley. In the 1960s, Gene was a Member of the Technical Staff at Fairchild Semiconductor R&D Lab. During this time, Gene worked on the development of processes and structures to improve silicon photodetectors. His paper, “Operation of p-n Junction Photodetectors in a Photon Flux Integrating Mode” (Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 2-3, Sept 1967) is cited as the original CMOS sensor paper. He has since authored numerous technical papers and has been granted several U.S. patents. In the 1970s and 1980s, Gene was the VP, Dir of Eng for EG&G Reticon, a firm he co-founded in 1971. He retired from EG&G in 1997 and has since started Rad-icon, a producer of CMOS imagers and cameras. Weckler Historic Audio Recordings ______________	Oral History – Gene Weckler This Oral History is Excerpted from an Interview Conducted in August, 2003. Mr. Weckler, would you please provide some background comments about when and how you came to work at Shockley Transistor Corporation? Another fellow and I who were in the Navy together, decided that upon our discharge we would go to college (the year 1955). We were both electronics technicians in the Navy. We wanted to go to a school that had a progressive electronics program. Utah State had one of the more progressive programs. During W.W.II Utah State had been selected by the Navy to teach a crash course in the electronics to officers. After the war, with guidance from Terman, they continued to teach electronics. My friend had difficulty making ends meet on the GI Bill and left college to get a job. He returned to California and got a job at Shockley Transistor, working for Vic Grinich. Shockley Transistor was in a “Quonset Hut” on San Antonio Ave in Mt. View. During the next 3 years while attending Utah State I would occasionally return to California, at which time I would stop by Shockley labs and visit my friend. Go To Weckler Oral History, Page 2
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