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Oral History – Wilf Corrigan
(Continued)
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Wilf, to conclude this
interview, would you provide some comments on the importance of the
Motorola Silicon Transistor program in the 1960s, especially thinking about
your later involvement with Fairchild?
From 1962
to1968 we were able to grow the Silicon Transistor business from about $3M
in '62, to about $100M in '68, which was about 50% of Motorola
Semiconductor's Revenues. The Silicon Transistor group accounted for the
majority of the profits of the division in 1968, after moving into the
black in 1962. No question that Motorola was the power in silicon
transistors in the 1960s – probably the push was not adequate in ICs.
Fairchild followed the opposite track and starved transistors for capital,
and funded ICs. We felt this in Moto that Fairchild had ceased to be a
problem after 1966.
C. Lester
Hogan was recruited by Fairchild in Aug '68, as President and CEO.
He brought eight of us with him. There was a lot of press on this at
the time. We were referred to as "Hogan's Heroes", in the
Electronics News and that label took hold. We were brought in to the vacuum
created, when first Charlie Sporck left to take over National Semiconductor,
then, in 1968 Noyce, Moore, and Grove left to form Intel. In 1968, initially
I was given responsibility for Transistors, Diodes, and offshore plants.
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Oral History – Wilf Corrigan
(Continued)
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Then
in 1970, I was made General Manager of the Semiconductor Division, which
was about 80% of the company at that time. In 1974, President and CEO, 1977
- Chairman was added in 1977.
Surprisingly,
when I moved to Fairchild in 1968, they still had not moved to Epitaxial
technology. This meant poor electrical specs, and a chip size 4x as big as
Motorola. My first management decision at Fairchild was to move to
Epitaxial versions, of every transistor. We poured capital into the
company, to catch up. We gained some ground but Motorola remained #1.
After that, the main focus was integrated circuits for everybody.
In 1979,
after a hostile takeover attempt by Gould, we sold the company to
Schlumberger, at a good price, and I went off to found LSI Logic, in 1980.
______________
Go
To Corrigan Oral History, Page 13
(For
Audio Clips and Additional Reference Material
for
this Oral History).
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