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Oral History – Bill Gutzwiller (Continued)
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Two weeks later, after we’d
returned to Milwaukee, the trademark blue envelop from GE showed up with an
offer letter from Ray York, not one of the marketing types in
Syracuse. It proposed an
engineering job in his Clyde operation with the later opportunity to
transfer to Marketing, at an initial salary of a bit more than $5000 per
year. This was a nice increase from
my salary at Harnischfeger. At that
time I had no semiconductor qualifications at all, only a diverse background
and an eagerness to learn, contribute and to work hard. Late in October I accepted the GE offer
and indicated that the first workday of the new year 1955 would be my first
day on the new job. I was
instructed to report to Electronics Park for physical exam and
processing. When I was sure there
was no chance of misunderstandings with GE, I told Harnischfeger I would be
leaving at the end of the year.
On my first day at GE, I was
surprised and excited to learn that I was being given sole responsibility
to evaluate the electrical capabilities of the new-five ampere rectifier device
and to come up with the ratings and characteristics information that would
go on the sales and specification sheets for the device. As part of this process, I would have to
define the outgoing test specifications that would assure that the product
would in fact do what it was specified to do. There was nothing like it on the market yet. I was amazed at
how much responsibility they were throwing at an unknown neophyte right off
the street.
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Oral History – Bill Gutzwiller (Continued)
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5 Amp Germanium Rectifier from 1955
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The above photo was provided by Bill and
represents the state-of-the-art in mid 1950s power semiconductor
technology. The germanium rectifier is mounted on a metal fin heatsink
(approx 3.5” square). When Bill
joined GE in 1955, he was given sole responsibility for evaluating the
newly developed 4JA3011 series of germanium rectifiers, capable of handling
an unheard of five amps. According
to Bill, “Similar work had been done on devices with one-tenth the power
rating of the new device, but still there needed to be a lot of innovation
to capitalize on the new capabilities.
There was nothing like it on the market yet.”
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Go
To Gutzwiller Oral History, Page 4
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