Transistor Museum Oral History Ralph Greenburg "Seminar Shenanigans" Page 4

EARLY TRANSISTOR HISTORY AT MOTOROLA

“SEMINAR SHENANIGANS” By Ralph Greenburg

Before the next speaker the fellow next to me presented his business card that stated he owned a wine shop in New Jersey (I wondered if he every attended a wine seminar at the Sex House). I blurted out a lie that I managed a liquor store in Scottsdale and patted my pockets as if trying to find a business card. I did have some cards but I figured he’d get suspicious if I gave him one inscribed “Motorola Application Engineer”. I told the gentleman I would go up to my room and get some cards and made a hasty exit.

I was truly impressed how much better the Wine Seminar was compared to a typical one given by Motorola. The Motorola ones were mostly technical, whereas the Wine one combined technical content, a little showmanship and audience participation. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate all these components into our seminars.

We did try one idea, thanks to Jack Takesuye. A customer wanted a portable ultra violet light source. Jack developed a small DC to AC converter and crammed the circuit into a flashlight complete with batteries and a ultra violet lamp bulb. Someone had the bright idea to use this at our seminars by shining the light on a white cloth which had something written on it with white crayon. The cloth was visible during the seminar but in normal light the writing was invisible. At conclusion of the seminar the lights were turned off and the flashlight was aimed at the cloth and the writing was clearly visible.

Our bit of showmanship read “DOWN WITH DELCO”. At the time Delco Semiconductors was a major competitor with a line of power transistor products. Our black light magic show usually left the audience laughing. All went well until one of our regional sales managers attended a seminar and he thought we should discontinue the display. He felt it was improper to disparage a competitor and further more Delco had equipment divisions, that were our customers, and their engineers would not think the sign was the least bit humorous. I suppose we could have made another sign that read “UP WITH MOTOROLA”, but that probably could have a twisted interpretation. So much for show business.

I suppose we could have built on the Arizona Room and the Wine Seminar and had a hospitality hour after each seminar. Could have had a wine tasting! But what wine would be served? White with Silicon and Red with Germanium or the other way around?

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A Transistor Museum™ History of Transistors Publication

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