Christophe Lécuyer

The Materiality of Microelectronics

This study advocates for ‘materials‐centered’ accounts in the history of technology, and presents such an analysis for the early history of microelectronics. Innovations in semiconductor crystal production were central to the emergence of solid state electronics and the dynamics of the early semiconductor industry. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Bell Telephone Laboratories developed novel techniques for growing semiconductor single crystals. These crystal‐making techniques were scaled up at Texas Instruments for the production of silicon transistors, and thereby underwrote the firm’s rise as a dominant manufacturer of silicon devices. Shockley Semiconductor, a West Coast start‐up, sought to gain a competitive advantage in the silicon device business by developing a new technique for producing silicon crystals. The failure of this strategy contributed to the disintegration of the firm, with several key staff members leaving to establish Fairchild Semiconductor. Learning from Shockley’s failure, Fairchild Semiconductor developed a low‐cost single crystal production capability that allowed it to introduce two milestone microelectronic devices: the double‐diffused planar transistor and the integrated circuit.

Silicon for industry: Component design, mass production, and the move to commercial markets at Fairchild semiconductor, 1960–1967

Abstract Most accounts of the microelectronics revolution have emphasized the role of military patronage and procurement in the shaping of silicon technology and the consolidation of the semiconductor industry. Little attention has been devoted, however, to the silicon industrys shift from military to commercial markets in the early and mid‐1960s. Drawing on an examination of Fairchild Semiconductor, the firm that initiated this shift, this essay argues that the silicon industrys expansion into non‐military markets was indissociable from deep changes in manufacturing, organizational structures as well as component and system technologies. Special attention is devoted to the ways in which Fairchild created a user base for its products in the computer and consumer electronics industries by hiring engineers from these sectors and encouraging them to design components as well as applications for the firms potential customers. This article also examines how Fairchild introduced mass production techniques fr...

High-Tech Corporatism: Management--Employee Relations in U.S. Electronics Firms, 1920s-1960s

In this article I examine corporative management practices in electronics firms in Boston and in Silicon Valley from the 1920s to the 1960s. Managers in several key firms developed these practices in response to political and professional ideologies and as a way to address the problems of hiring, using, and retaining a highly skilled work force. They did this independently of the welfare capitalism plans of corporations such as Eastman Kodak and before the guru theorists and work empowerment programs of the 1960s. The corporatist methods first developed in Boston and further refined in Silicon Valley later diffused to most U.S. firms in the software, computer, Internet, and biotechnology industries.

From nuclear physics to semiconductor manufacturing: the making of ion implantation

This article examines the emergence of ion implantation as a major semiconductor manufacturing process from the early 1960s through the late 1970s. Ion implantation techniques originated in nuclear physics research and were first employed to make solar cells for military satellites at the Ion Physics Corporation (IPC). This work at IPC inspired a research group at Sprague Electric to use ion implantation techniques to make transistors. Spragues process development work, and its key finding that ion implantation enabled the control of critical transistor characteristics, were both exploited by Mostek, a semiconductor start‐up funded by Sprague. Mosteks engineers incorporated ion implantation into their manufacturing process to produce a string of integrated circuits that other firms could not make. Mosteks market success encouraged semiconductor firms to embrace ion implantation in the early and mid 1970s. By the end of the decade, ion implantation was used in the manufacture of virtually all advanced integrated circuits. This article improves our understanding of the development and adoption of semiconductor, and more generally high technology, manufacturing processes. It also advances our knowledge of the ways in which new technologies developed in the Cold War context made their way into the manufacturing economy.

Digital Foundations: The Making of Silicon-Gate Manufacturing Technology

From 1960 onward, the expanding use of microchips played a major role in the establishment of the digital world. This paper examines the dominant manufacturing technology for microchips in this period: silicon-gate MOS technology. It reconstructs the development of silicon gate technology from its emergence at Bell Labs, Fairchild, General Micro-electronics, and Hughes in the mid-1960s to its stabilization at Intel and its augmentation with ion implantation at Mostek in the early 1970s. This article argues that silicon gate emerged at the convergence point of three contextual logics: material logic (the opportunities and constraints offered by materials and material capabilities), market logic (the dynamics of semiconductor markets), and competitive logic (the imperative of surviving in a fiercely competitive industry). Thus, this article is intended as a contribution to materials-centered studies and to recent interest on the connection between intentionality and materiality in technology and science.

High tech manufacturing

Taylor and Francis GHAT_A_408491.sgm 10.1080/07341510903083187 Hist ry and Technology 0734-1512 (pri t)/1477-2620 (online) Introduction 2 09 & Francis 5 3 000September 2 09 Ch istopheLecuyer chrlec y r@y hoo.c Responding to changes in both the US economy and society, in the late 1960s and 1970s social theorists forecasted the emergence of a new social and economic order: the postindustrial society. Prominent in these commentaries was the rise of ‘high tech’ sectors such as computers, electronics, and pharmaceuticals, a rise that was deemed indicative of the transition to post-industrial society. Daniel Bell argued that US society was increasingly dominated by a scientific class and the primacy of theoretical knowledge. Other important characteristics of the new society that Bell saw emerging were the planned advance of technical change and the development of new ‘intellectual technologies’ such as cybernetics and information theory. In tandem, Bell argued that the US economy was increasingly shifting away from manufacturing to services (R&D, health, and education) and that, in the manufacturing sector, the new, high tech industries were primarily dependent on scientific research. According to Bell, the motive forces behind these shifts were the exponential growth of science, systematic R&D, the codification of theoretical knowledge, and the state’s mobilization of science and technology since the end of the World War II. Bell’s work was highly influential, shaping much of the social science and social commentary discourses on the changes in the US economy and society in the later twentieth century. However, what Bell and many other commentators missed in their analyses was the persistent importance of manufacturing, including in high tech. Manufacturing was a major activity within high tech industries. It also was a significant site of innovation. To produce semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and other leading-edge products, engineers and scientists developed new and complex manufacturing processes. They adapted instruments for scientific research and turned them into manufacturing tools. They also created novel production systems and new manufacturing environments such as the clean room. In many high tech industries, these new manufacturing techniques and systems profoundly shaped product design, individual firm strategies, the structure of industries, and even led to the formation of new bodies of scientific knowledge. The goal of this special section is to examine these transformations of manufacturing within high tech industries in the postwar period. An important theme connecting the four articles in this section is the interface between the state and high tech industries, especially as it relates to manufacturing. Many high tech industries were sponsored and to a large degree ‘willed’ by the post-war state, mostly for national security purposes. Manufacturing technologies were designed to meet the state’s requirements for volume, performance, and reliability, but starting in the 1960s and increasingly in the 1970s, the relations between the state and high tech industries became more akin to those between a customer (among many) and its suppliers. Market forces became more prevalent. In this section, we are interested in capturing the changing role of the state in the development of high tech manufacturing

Building Science-based Medicine at Stanford: Henry Kaplan and the Medical Linear Accelerator, 1948–1975

The hospital is one of the places where people encounter highly advanced science and technology in their daily lives. In the hospital, patients are in contact with a number of scientific innovations and new machines and technologies, more so as computed axial tomography scanners (CAT) and magnetic resonance imaging scanners (MRI) have become indispensable tools for medical diagnosis.1 The instrumentalization of diagnosis and hospital treatment, however, has not been without mixed results. First, the introduction of machines on the bedside, it is often alleged, has distanced physicians from their patients. Patients have found that machine-dominated treatment is given a privileged position and have felt alienated from the doctors’ personal care. On the physicians’ side, their clinical experience has been superseded by information derived from medical instruments. Furthermore, technologies in the hospital have often been associated with the ever-increasing cost of medical care.