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Biographic Note
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Mary Anne Potter started to work
at Texas Instruments on June 26, 1962, as a process/product engineer on
Minuteman ICs. Early on, she became the lead process engineer for the
quad-diffused IC designs at TI, and was involved in some of the original
and historic work on the first large scale production of integrated
circuits. Ms. Potter stayed at TI through the 1960s, working with a
variety of integrated circuit development activities. Later, she was
employed at a number of other well known semiconductor companies, including
MOSTEK, AMI, and Fairchild. Ms. Potter later returned to TI, where she
became TI’s first female fab manager. Later she transferred into the
Defense Systems and Electronics Group for TI. She became a Raytheon
employee when Raytheon bought DSEG. This Oral History provides a
fascinating technical overview of the early TI integrated circuit
manufacturing environment and, in addition, offers an insight into the
professional working environment of a young engineer in the new and
emerging semiconductor industry of the 1960s.
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Oral History – Mary Anne Potter
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This
Oral History was taken in Sept 2001
Professional
Experience with Early
TI
Integrated Circuits.
On June 26, 1962, I started to
work for TI as a process/product engineer on Minuteman ICs. I was surprised
to learn that the engineer who had made me the original job offer had
since left TI to work for another company. I later discovered that TI also
stood for “training institute” and that many graduating engineers came to
TI to get some experience and then go to other companies - TI engineers
were greatly sought after. I think this position may have been one of the
most significant ones in my technical career because the department manager
was Jack Kilby, and the department people were “pioneering” IC processing
and design. Years later, Jack was awarded the patent for the invention of
the IC. I worked in his organizations for about 6 of the years I was at TI
the first time. Jack had invented the IC a few years before I joined TI,
but the business itself had not grown very fast until TI received the
Minuteman IC order. I was to be a process/product engineer for the four
designs in the quad-diffused category.
Potter
Oral History, Page 2
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