The Fairchild
Semiconductor Days
For all practical purposes I've been directly involved
with the first silicon sensor work in Silicon Valley. The person most responsible
for bringing sensor technology to the area was Art Zias. Art was a technical
writer at Bell Labs while an engineering student in the late fifties. The
physics of piezoresistance in silicon and germanium was derived from the
work of Phann, Thurston and Smith at Bell and was chronicled by Art. Art
also worked as a professional saxophone player at the major New York studios
during the fifties. In his own words "I was skilled enough to play
with the top jazz artists, but not talented enough to be ranked with them."
Pfann's
work inspired Art to make a life long career of silicon sensors. Bill Pfann
made a comment at the time that not only inspired Art but perhaps defined
the industry "Now that we've studied the transduction effects
in semiconductors for the purpose of getting rid of them, maybe they're
useful."
In 1960, Art joined GE where he won a competition against
Honeywell for an Airforce (WADC) contract on solid state motion transduction.
That motivated Tony Kurtz to leave Honeywell and found Kulite. In 1964,
Art joined Honeywell to start the Solid State Electronics Center (SSEC).
During the sixties, Art lead SSEC's development of piezoresistive
accelerometers and pressure sensors for the Aerospace, Industrial and Microswitch
divisions. Hans Keller was then a physicist at SSEC. He later founded Keller
Druckmestechnik in Switzerland. In 1969, Art joined ex-Honeyweller, Don
Lynam, as director of Engineering at Fairchild Camera & Instrument's
Transducer operation. Gene Burk soon left Honeywell to join Art. Art credits
Gene with the original work on bulk silicon micromachining. Prior to Gene's
work sensors did not incorporate three dimensional structures, only planar
structures. Don, Art and Gene Burk left Fairchild and founded IC Transducers
(now Foxboro ICT) with Fairchild's blessings in 1971.
In 1972, Art and Bill Hare founded National Semiconductor's
transducer operation without Fairchild's blessings. In addition to
ICT, an effort continued at Fairchild aimed at automotive applications.
At Fairchild the hope was to develop a manifold absolute pressure sensor,
similar in technology to the ignition module, based on silicon piezoresistance
technology. With Art's departure the effort was stopped. National
and Fairchild became involved in a legal dispute over the nature of Art's
departure. What remained of the technology at Fairchild was sold to Bob
Hood, became Cognition and was eventually sold to Emerson Electric, never
to be heard of again.
I met Art in 1973 at a golf outing arranged by a mutual
friend and fellow engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, Rick Schaffzin.
Rick became president of IC Sensors in the eighties. Art has a horrible
golf swing. It's best that one just learning the game look away when
Art swings to avoid the Methuselah curse. Rumor has it that seeing Art's
swing may turn one into a pillar of salt.
At Fairchild we developed the
first solid state ignition modules with Delco Electronics, shipping 50,000
modules a week during peak
production. I was a process and product engineer for automotive and other
hybrid products. The engineering manager was Rodney Smith, now president
of Altera.
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