Transistor Museum Oral History Ralph Greenburg "Seminar Shenanigans" Page 3

EARLY TRANSISTOR HISTORY AT MOTOROLA

“SEMINAR SHENANIGANS” By Ralph Greenburg

What Wine is Served with Silicon?

Application Engineers were always part of the crew at the IEEE convention held in New York City and at WESCON held at various locations on the West Coast. Not to be outdone by the East and West Coast the National Electronics Conference; N.E.C., was started in Chicago. One year in addition to a booth on the Exhibit floor Motorola leased a curtained off area to hold various seminars during the week of the show. One day on my lunch break from booth duty I stopped to see which seminar Motorola was presenting. It was on Quality Control and our Director of Q.C. was pointing to the screen explaining some obscure statistical theorem to an audience of two, one of whom was sound asleep. That crowd made the ten in Newark look like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

At these conferences, Motorola always had a Hospitality Suite, The Arizona Room. The venue was done in a Gay Ninety style with a hostess who gave out garters with Motorola Semiconductors printed on them. The food was prime rib sandwiches washed down with the drink of your choice. Entertainment was usually a guitar player or a Dixieland Band. The Application Engineers were invited and were supposed to mingle with the customers and be prepared to answer technical questions. After about an hour the customers would be quite mellow and more interested in listening to the music and telling the latest jokes rather than discussing technical details

At this particular N.E.C. the Applications crew decided to leave early since no one seemed to need our expertise. As we exited the Arizona Room we noticed a sign next to another Banquet Room, it stated that a Wine Seminar was being held. We all thought that it was funny that anyone would present a technical discussion on wine. I suggested we all crash the seminar and see what was going on. My co-workers declined but I went in and found a seat. A slide show was in progress. The speaker showed bar charts that compared the acidity and sugar content on wine made from grapes located on different hillsides somewhere in France. It was very technical and I learned that wine making was more than just crushing grapes and letting the juice ferment.

The presenter finished with a view of the vineyard and a slide of a young French girl in peasant attire holding the biggest bunch of grapes I ever saw. He then said the tasting would occur. Everyone was given a small glass of wine. I chuck-a-lugged mine, oops! a faux pas. Everyone else was sniffing the contents, then swirling a small amount in their mouths, some even looked like they were biting the wine as if the seeds hadn’t been strained out. No one noticed my big gulp and soon all were filling out an evaluation sheet.

Go To Greenburg “Seminar Shenanigans”, Page 4

A Transistor Museum™ History of Transistors Publication

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