A Transistor Museum Interview with Wilf Corrigan Personal Reflections on Motorola’s Pioneering 1960s Silicon Transistor Development Program
Oral History – Wilf Corrigan (Continued)
MOTOROLA SILICON TRANSISTORS – In TVs and MISSILES
1966 Ad for the New  Motorola “Solid-State Signal Sensor” High Reliability  TV from Motorola	1970s 2N2222 (Made at Motorola’s Korean Facility)   and 1960s Plastic TO92 Although the plastic cased versions of Motorola silicon transistors, introduced in the mid 1960s, were a large scale commercial success and were used extensively in Motorola consumer products such as TV sets, there were some unexpected “start-up” problems.  According to Wilf: “ Another example (of early Transistor Reliability testing) was in the early stages of plastic transistors, around 1963/64 at (Motorola).  We tested the plastic transistors virtually to the same military specification that we tested the sealed metal can transistors, and they came through wonderfully.  They just did great, and we were all very pleased about that.  And then, they went into production and we tested them the same way, which we thought was very rigorous, and we life tested them, and then I remember getting a phone call from Bob Galvin at Motorola, who was the CEO at the time.  And he said, “I want to know why our television sets south of the Mason-Dixon line are starting to die in August.  We think it is your transistors.”  Wilf and his team quickly solved the problem with a different plastic formulation [7].  High reliability for the metal cased transistors was demonstrated sufficiently to qualify for military applications, such as the Minute Man missile program [8]. ______________
1967 Ad for the First All-Transistor Color TV – made by Motorola and Featuring High Reliability ______________ Go To Corrigan Oral History, Page 12
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