Art Zias
But what became of Art Zias you ask. During Christmas
1996 and New Year 1997, Art and his lovely wife, Ellie, toured Africa.
There were reports their trip was partially funded by the Oakland school
district for research into the true origins of Ebonics. Yet other reports
have Art starting another sensor company or as lead saxophone for the Swahili
military marching band. Based upon Art's background any one of the stories
could, in fact, be true. Upon leaving National Semiconductor in 1982 Art
went to be cofounder of Tricomp Sensors, ultimately a publicly funded company
that went belly up thanks to the fine efforts of Ralph Voerst their principal
investor and fund raiser par excellence. Art then founded Captorr along
with professor Barry Block.
Barry is "the guru of variable capacitance, silicon
to pyrex to silicon microstructures" having made a name for himself
through the sale of the technology to Signetics in the seventies for automotive
accelerometers. Each person associated with Barry has a different word
for the "name" he has made for himself. I have found him to be
incredibly interesting. However, it is a little bit disconcerting when
all your meetings with him include his attorney and you have been told
that he has made a significant amount of his money by way of law suits.
Captorr contracted with Dresser Industries to develop
and "turn-key" a very low pressure (0.1 inch of water column
full scale) variable capacitance differential pressure transducer. The
technology developed for Dresser is now used in Dresser's low pressure
devices and in some products manufactured though a Dresser Nagano joint
venture in Japan. Other silicon pressure sensors manufactured in Japan
by Fujikura, Nagano and others had there origins via technology transfers
between Honeywell, Dresser, Foxboro ICT and their Japanese partners. Captorr
technology rights were sold to Dresser and Art and Barry left for other
pursuits.
Art joined Teknekron Sensor Development Corp in Menlo
Park, a company formed by a wealthy man, Harvey Wagner, residing on a ranch
near Lake Tahoe. Apparently Harvey made a lot of money when he sold a credit
report software company to TRW. Teknekron was formed for the purpose of
developing companies in an incubator environment for the purpose of liquidity
and provide a large return on investment to the principal investor, Harvey.
The working principals where a handful of Phd's from industry and academia
with interests in sensors of all types. The facility had state of the art
sensor semiconductor and micromachining capability. In the end TSD, had
its funding terminated when the forecast for the return on investment was
determined to be too low. Four of the individuals, Martin Przybylski as
President, Art as VP engineering, Shawn Kahil in engineering and Norm Nystrom
for facilities left to form a silicon gas flowmetering company called Fluid
IC. This company had funding for the purpose of developing a replacement
for the home natural gas meter and other monitoring system metering in
the gas distribution business. Fluid IC was absorbed by Itron and ceased
operation in 1995.
Art now consults through Ziasense, a "dba" of
CapTorr. Art is an active consultant to several companies in the sensor
industry. He provides a short tutorial on silicon sensor technology for
newcomers to the technology or full courses for those skilled in the technology
and business. Art also is an active director of MCA Technologies, a promising
new company founded by Ali Rastegar, that provides ASIC signal conditioning
circuits for sensors. To all that know Art he is truly a fine person and
has been instrumental in the formation of the silicon micromachining industry.
However, he's still has a horrible golf swing.
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