Bo Lojek 
History of Semiconductor Engineering 

performing ?rms were curtailed following the stock market decline and the subsequent economic slowdown of 2001 and 2002. The Federal Government was once the main source of the nation’s R&D funds, funding as much as 66. 7 percent of all U. S. R&D in 1964. The Federal share ?rst fell below 50 percent in 1979, and after 1987 it fell steadily, dr- ping from 46. 3 percent in that year to 25. 1 percent in 2000 (the lowest it has ever been since 1953). Adjusting for in?ation, Federal support decreased 18 percent from 1987 to 2000, although in nominal terms, Federal support grew from $58. 5 billion to $66. 4 billion during that period. Growth in industrial funding generally outpaced growth in Federal support, leading to the decline in Federal support as a proportion of the total. Fig. 2. Doctorates awarded in Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics: 1995–2002 [Source: National Science Foundation NSF 04–303 (October 2003)] Figure 1 explains the most signi?cant change in the industry which occurred in the early sixties. The industry, with pressure from Wall Street, could not ?nance long-range and risky basic research. The objective of basic research is to gain more comprehensive knowledge or understanding of the subject under study without speci?c applications in mind. Basic research advances scienti?c knowledge but does not have speci?c immediate commercial objectives. Basic research can fail and often will not bring results in a short period of time.

Table of Content

Prologue.- Research Organization: Bell Telephone Laboratories.- Grown Junction and Diffused Transistors.- Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories.- Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation — Subsidiary of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Company.- Driving the Company Out of Business.- Integrated Circuits outside Fairchild Semiconductor.- Linear Integrated Circuits: Pre-Widlar Era Prior to 1963.- Robert J. Widlar — The Genius, The Legend, The Bohemian.- National Semiconductor — A New Type of Semiconductor Company.- The MOS Transistor.- Epilogue.

About the author

Bo Lojek received his Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from Charles University in Prague. He joined the semiconductor industry in the middle of the nineteen sixties and has been working in the industry since then. Currently, he is the Principal Engineer in Atmel Corporation and Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. He holds over thirty patents, most of them on the nonvolatile memory cell.