History of Semiconductor Engineering [Paperback]

When basic researchers started working on semiconductors during the late nineteen thirties and on integrated circuits at the end of the nineteen fifties, they did not know that their work would change the lives of future generations. Very few people at that time recognized the significance of, perhaps, the most important invention of the century. Historians have assigned the invention of integrated circuits to Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. In this book, the author argues that the group of inventors was much larger. This richly illustrated account is a personal recollection of the development of integrated circuits and personalities – such as Russell Ohl, Karl Lark-Horovitz, William Shockley, Carl Frosch, Lincoln Derick, Calvin Fuller, Kurt Lehovec. Jean Hoerni, Sheldon Roberts, Jay Last, Isy Haas, Bob Norman, Dave Allison, Jim Nall, Tom Longo, Bob Widlar, Dave Talbert, Frank Wanlass, and Federico Faggin. Here is the first comprehensive behind-the-scenes account of the history of the integrated circuit, the microelectronics industry, and the people closely involved in the development of the transistor and the integrated circuit.

Your book is going to make a major contribution to semiconductor history. You and I agree that, while the world loves a hero, semiconductor progress depended on the efforts and ideas of a large number of people, and that moving forward depended on contributors going back a few decades in some cases. Also, as is the case with most inventions, a number of people with access to the same pool of common knowledge were working independently at the same time to put it all together and to make the necessary extensions to the existing technology and who realized that the time was right for society to accept the new concepts. Your diligent research points all of this out.

Dr. Jay Last, Former Shockley Laboratories employee, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor, co-founder of Amelco Semilӡ