How Times Have Changed

The picture of the Intel CEO holding a pizza size silicon wafer with billions of transistors brought me back to an incident in my early engineering career.

In 1958 , Connie Zeirdt and I went to Tokyo as a consulting team to assist Sony with its evolving semiconductor manufacturing.

Our stay in Tokyo was unforgettable. We were treated with the up most respect by the likes of Mr. Ibuka the co-founder of Sony, the legendary Akio Morita the Managing Director and Mr. Iwama the Director of Engineering.
As an illustration of the management philosophy which would lead Sony to the pinnacle of the consumer electronics industry I am reminded of an incident which took place during the course of discussions with Sony engineers.

At the time of our visit the standard for float zone silicon single crystals was approximately .5" diameter. However at GE we were about to release to manufacturing equipment and a process to grow crystals approximately .75" in diameter ( a far cry from today's pizza size crystals).

In discussing crystal growing techniques with the Sony engineers they pressed me for the drawings and process specifications for the crystal growing equipment currently being used at GE. I recommended that they wait approximately another month and then they could have access to the larger diameter crystal growing process. One of the engineers was unconvinced and intimated that I was stalling. A debate ensued among the engineers. The debate was short lived. Mr. Iwama, the Director of Engineering proclaimed that they would do as Mr. Rugare suggested. Dollars and time were saved. To me this was indicative of how fast Sony would progress.