Premier Semiconductor Services LLC history

Founded in 1885 as American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Bell Telephone Company, its nationwide telephone service made it the largest corporation in America at one time.

Frank J. Sprague founded the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company in 1886 to exploit applications for electric motors.

The Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) was founded as a laboratory responsible for conducting test and research on electricity and electrical communications under the Japanese Ministry of Communications in 1891.

Former AT&T engineer, Greenleaf W. Pickard and two associates founded the Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company to market crystal radio detectors in 1907.

In 1912 Tokuji Hayakawa started a metalworking shop in Tokyo and developed the highly successful “Ever Sharp” mechanical pencil.

Holding a controlling interest, General Electric founded the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) together with AT&T in 1919 to develop international communications.

Founded in 1920 as the Puerto Rico Telephone Company by Sosthenes Behn, ITT grew by acquisition in the European market.

Vannevar Bush, Laurence K. Marshall, and Charles G. Smith, founded the Raytheon Company in Cambridge, MA. as the American Appliance Company in 1922.

Renamed International Business Machines, Inc. in 1924, the company grew into the dominant United States supplier of business and accounting machines in the first half of the century.

Hugo Lieber founded Sonotone Corporation to produce hearing aids in New York in 1930.

Arthur Collins founded Collins Radio Company in 1933 in Cedar Rapids, IA to produce radio equipment.

The Radiation Laboratory, or Rad Lab, was established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940 as a division of the National Defense Research Committee to exploit radar and magnetron technology developed in the UK. Lee A. DuBridge was appointed director of the laboratory.

George A. Philbrick Researches, Inc. was founded in 1946 by George Philbrick in Boston, MA to build analog computers for military aircraft.

Developed in 1947, as a replacement for vacuum tubes and mechanical relays, the transistor revolutionized the electronics world.

Here Mataré and Welker independently invented and patented a point contact device called a transistron in 1948.

The Bakalar brothers, David and Leo, founded Transitron Electronic Corporation in a former bakery in Melrose, MA in 1952.

The Regency Division signed an agreement in 1954 to manufacture a miniature transistor radio based on Texas Instruments transistors.

The company was purchased by Burroughs Corporation in 1956.

Control Data Corporation was founded in Minneapolis, MN in 1957 by engineers, including William Norris and Seymour Cray, from a Univac division (originally Engineering Research Associates) in St Paul, Minnesota.

The David W. Mann Company manufactured precision measuring instruments and manufacturing equipment in Lincoln, MA. A pioneer in photolithographic technology for the semiconductor industry, the company was sold to GCA Corporation in 1959.

Beckman sold the division to Clevite Corporation in 1960 after losing his $1 million investment.

Molectro Science Corporation was founded in Santa Clara, CA by J. Nall and D. Spittlehouse from Fairchild in 1962.

The computer division merged with International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in 1963.

ITT acquired Clevite in 1965.

Philco developed bipolar linear and digital ICs and in 1966 purchased MOS pioneer General Micro-Electronics of Santa Clara.

The division operated under the wing of Walt LaBerge of Western Development Labs until the business was transferred to Philadelphia and the Santa Clara facility closed in 1968.

In 1969 AMS introduced one of the first 1K DRAMs.

With 12 in-house developed chips, including the AL1 microprocessor slice and a 2K DRAM, the company entered the distributed processor systems market in 1970.

The company expanded into the production of handheld calculators in 1971.

HMW sold its watch division to Swiss owners in 1974.

Based in Sunnyvale, CA, Signetics became a major supplier of high-volume bipolar digital logic and memory devices before the parent company, Corning Glass, sold the operations to Philips in 1975.

To finance expansion, Atari was sold to Warner Communications in 1976.

After a $15 million investment in dedicated CMOS and LCD technology and consumer promotion efforts, Intel divested the operation in 1978 as inconsistent with its strategic direction.

Harris provided IC technology to Matra-Harris, a 1979 European joint venture with a French state-owned electronics company.

Linear Technology of Milpitas, CA was founded in 1981 as one of the first companies to focus exclusively on the design and development of high-performance analog ICs.

Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. was founded in 1983 in Sunnyvale, California by a group of ten coworkers including John F. Gifford, Frederick G. Beck, and Richard C. Hood.

Xilinx, Inc was founded in San Jose, CA in 1984 by Jim Barnett, Ross Freeman, and Bernie Vonderschmitt to develop a field programmable gate array based on a static RAM cell structure.

With a focus on advanced memory and microprocessor devices the company became the world’s largest merchant semiconductor supplier for the seven years following 1985.

The company merged with Sperry Rand, the maker of Univac computers, to form Unisys in 1986.

A successor company merged with Thomson Semiconducteurs of France to create the ST Group in 1987.

The microelectronics business was sold to Plessey in 1988.

Later renamed Teledyne Semiconductor, the company operated as a unit of Teledyne Components before being spun out in 1993 as Telcom Semiconductor, Inc.

Extended litigation with Intel and other problems led to the sale of the company assets to Atmel Corporation in 1994.

In 1997 National divested a group, formed as the present Fairchild Semiconductor, in a leveraged buy-out.

A technology and manufacturing alliance with Fujitsu culminated in its acquisition by the Japanese company in 2002.