EARLY SEMICONDUCTOR HISTORY AT RCA Robert Mendelson
Oral History – Bob Mendelson (Continued) I finally had to learn how to make Silicon transistors. I worked in the photo processes where patterns were etched on the ½ inch wafers before firing to make the bases and emitters by diffusion. Aluminum vaporization onto the wafers prior to etching the metal pattern was also my responsibility. RCA had a large number of transistor types, each a little different. It made work very interesting. In the late 1960’s RCA transferred production at Somerville from transistors to integrated circuits. At that time I became a Group Leader for linear types. A few years later the hourly personnel went on a long strike causing RCA to ship all the equipment to Findlay, Ohio where they were not on strike. Somerville then became a design and application location. RCA started with simple arrays with just a few simple transistors or simple amplifiers. As time went by, I became more of an electrical engineer than the chemical engineer I was when I started. At various times I was involved in IC processing, applications, design, and quality control. Here is a list of some of the ICs I worked with in Design Engineering – Chip Layout and Processing (1972 to 1976): CA555 - Timer CA3098 - Programmable Schmidt Trigger CA3099 - Programmable Comparator	Oral History – Bob Mendelson (Continued) TA6574 - FM IF Limiter Detector TA6575 - Stereo Decoder TA6580 - Stereo Decoder TA6833 - Digital Level Shifter High Reliability Engineering – 1976-1979 I started in linear circuits HI-Rel operation— Evaluated all customer military specifications and negotiated with customers on special orders such as TRW – Class S CA108; Lockheed – Class S CA3004, CA3006 Setup and ran the full operation to qualify the first linear type (CA3045) for Mil-Std 38510 QPL-1. This included full government negotiation on parameters and specifications that needed revision. Applications Engineering – 1979-1980 Ford message center – worked with customer on specifications and helped him overcome production line problems caused by other than RCA IC’s. Northern Electric – Finalized the customer’s circuit design for a water level alarm. Potential business of one million CA3164 per year. Mendelson Oral History, Page 3
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