Semiconductor History

Vintage Ediswan Mazda XB103 Germanium Transistor EDISWAN Germanium transistor originally from the late 1950s. The gain on this device is at the very top end of the gain spec @ 105. Edison and Swan merged in Britain in the late 1800s when Swan already held the dominant patents for the incadescent bulb. Ediswan were one of the original companies in the Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) merger from 1929 which included British Thomson Houston. Thomson Houston in the US became General Electric. Many British lamp companies moved into valves (tubes). Indeed the inventor of the first thermionic valve, Ambrose Fleming, worked at Edison Swan's factory at Ponders End in North London. Siemens Brothers (the other brothers) merged with Edison Swan in the early 1950s. It's not clear where Ediswan semiconductors were manufactured but may have been at Woolwich or Ponders End. Siemens Edison Swan had a research lab in West Road, Harlow in the late 1950s doing semiconductor res...

AEI Semiconductors Avalanche Diodes British Thomson Houston established a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Carholme Road, Lincoln, England in 1956 with a focus on power devices. In 1963 it became part of AEI, and the AEI Rugby R&D team were transferred in 1966. In 1967 GEC acquired AEI, and in 1975 further semiconductor research activities in CMOS and RF were transferred from GEC Central Research to Lincoln. In the early 1980s a new facility was built in Doddington Road with ICs and RF devices transferred to the new facility. Carholme Road continued to produce power devices including general purpose and fast recovery diodes, GTOs and thyristors. Doddington Road produced standard, semi custom and full custom CMOS ICs and SOS devices for Space. RF devices included GaAs products, SAW filters and passives. Together with Hybrid facilities in Swindon and Portsmouth the company changed its name to Marconi Electronic Devices Ltd (MEDL). MEDL became uncompetitive in digital ...

2N609 : hfe=80, Vf=233mV. 2N60 : hfe=55, Vf=243mV Westinghouse created a US semiconductor group in the early 1950s to develop high power transistors. In 1956 they established a manufacturing facility in Youngwood PA and research groups in Wilkinson and Churchill Borough.    Westinghouse only produced low power transistors for a few years up until the early 1960s. The devices shown are the 2N60 from 1960 and 2N609 from 1963, and are gold finished. The Youngwood facility still exists as Powerex, a JV from 1986 between the power semiconductor divisions of Westinghouse and GE. Westinghouse Brake & Signal Company also had a UK facility which developed the first commercial rectifier in the 1920s. It became Westcode Semiconductors and is still in operation as IXYS.

Ferranti ZS72 200V silicon diodes and STC CV7476 600V Avalanche diodes The Ferranti semiconductor division in Oldham, Greater Manchester was a prominent UK semiconductor supplier in the 1960s and 1970s, and produced the world's first programmable logic arrays. Ferranti eventually became Zetex Semiconductors, until acquired by Diodes Incorporated in 2008.       STC were the first manufacturer of point contact transistors in the UK, developed at STC in Ilminster, Somerset. STC moved valve (tube) manufacturing from Woolwich to the remote Ilminster in 1940. Volume semiconductor manufacturing was established in 1956 at the Brimar valve site in Footscray, Kent, eventually becoming part of Nortel before manufacturing ceased in 1993, when IC design was transferred to Nortel in Harlow.