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Oral History – Bill Gutzwiller (Continued)
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GE announced the break-through
in a press conference, and I found myself in a photo in Business Week
magazine with Ray Jacques looking over my shoulder as I controlled the
speed of a 1/2 HP DC motor with a little radio-type control potentiometer. I was besieged by phone calls from
industrial businesses all over the country, even from outside the United
States, asking for more detailed technical information. I started writing magazine articles for
the technical journals and application notes on the SCR. I assembled a number of these original
application notes and edited them into a 50 page GE publication which we
called the “SCR Manual”. Eventually
the GE SCR Manual grew to over 400 pages.
Millions of copies were distributed. It was translated into at least a dozen languages. The last I heard it was in its 9th
Edition, long after I had gone on to other positions in other GE businesses. I still run into retired engineers
everywhere who recall the impact that GE SCR’s and GE’s SCR Manual had on
their businesses. In the
international arena the SCR became known as the “thyristor”, probably
because this terminology had less American connotation.
Go
To Gutzwiller Oral History, Page 8
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Oral History – Bill Gutzwiller (Continued)
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This is the cover of the first edition of
the GE Controlled Rectifier Manual, which was published in 1960. Here are few introductory comments from
the manual, “...GE developed the silicon Controlled Rectifier deliberately
as a high current, high voltage, high efficiency switch and introduced it
early in 1958. The impact of the
SCR was felt immediately since it could replace thyratrons and magnetic
amplifiers in many existing circuits…”.
As Bill mentions in the Oral History, he was the primary contributor
and editor for the early editions of SCR manual. Further editions continued to be published throughout the
1960s and 1970s.
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