James M. Early
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In Memoriam...James M. Early

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PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) – James M. Early, an electrical engineer and inventor best known for his work with transistors, has died. He was 81.

Early created much of the design theory of bipolar transistors at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., where he worked for Nobel Prize winner William Shockley.

Early died Monday, his daughter said.

He worked for 18 years at Bell Laboratories, where he also discovered the effects of space-charge layer widening, which became known as "The Early Effect."

In 1969, Early moved to Palo Alto to work at Fairchild Semiconductor as vice president of research and development. Early held 14 patents by the time he retired in 1986 from Fairchild.

Fairchild Semiconductor, created in 1957 by eight scientists who originally were brought out from the East Coast by Shockley, revolutionized the chip industry and became the entrepreneurial breeding ground for several other companies, including Intel Corp., National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices.

 

Pioneering engineer and inventor James Early dies


The Associated Press
1/15/2004, 5:11 p.m. ET

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- James M. Early, an electrical engineer and inventor best known for his pioneering work with transistors, has died. He was 81. Early died Monday at a veteran's hospital in Palo Alto.


Early created much of the design theory of bipolar transistors at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., where he worked for Nobel Prizewinner William Shockley.

Early was born in Syracuse, N.Y., the second of nine children. He worked for 18 years at Bell Laboratories, where he also discovered the effects of space-charge layer widening, which became known as "The Early Effect."

In 1969, Early moved to Palo Alto to work at Fairchild Semiconductor as vice president of research and development. Early held 14 patents by the time he retired in 1986 from Fairchild.

Fairchild Semiconductor, created in 1957 by eight scientists who originally were brought out from the East Coast by Shockley, revolutionized the chip industry and became the entrepreneurial breeding ground for several other companies, including Intel Corp., National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices. Those eight scientists left Shockley to create Fairchild Semiconductor.

"What strikes me ... is how he made time for family," his daughter, Rhoda Alexander, said Thursday. "He built us a sandbox."

Early, who biked to work, was a voracious reader and also took the family swimming, sailing and on hikes, Alexander said. He also volunteered to make recordings for the blind from technical manuals and journals.

Early is survived by his wife, Mary Agnes; seven daughters, a son, 11 grandchildren, eight brothers and a sister.

below from ny times

James Early, Engineer Who Helped Create a Transistor, Dies at 81

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: January 19, 2004

James M. Early, an electrical engineer who pioneered increased transistor performance in the 1950's at Bell Labs, died on Jan. 12 at the veterans hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 81 and lived in Palo Alto.

The cause of death was severe asthma, which Mr. Early had suffered from since childhood, a daughter, Mary Beth Early, said.

When Dr. Early arrived at the Bell Labs research laboratory in Murray Hill, N.J., in September 1951, his first task was to measure the performance of the first transistors made at Bell Labs, and also those from General Electric and RCA.

During the 1950's, he made theoretical contributions that led to faster transistor performance, which was crucial for applications like television, the FM transistor radio and early military radar.

He is most widely recognized for describing an aspect of the behavior of bipolar transistors, known as the Early Effect. Transistor designers used the effect to optimize the performance of the transistors, which were tiny switches. He remained at Bell Labs for 18 years before joining Fairchild Camera and Instrument in Palo Alto. He was a laboratory director for Bell Labs in Murray Hill from 1962 to 1964 and in Allentown, Pa., from 1964 to 1969.

While at Bell Labs, he created the oscillator transistor for the first United States satellite, led the development of solar cells and transistors for the Telstar I satellite and participated in the original integrated circuit work at the laboratory.

When he went West in 1969, he became director of the Fairchild Research Center. Under his guidance, that company developed commercial charged coupled devices, which were used in early military reconnaissance satellites.

When he retired from Fairchild in 1986, he took his rack of ties and held a necktie-burning celebration, telling his family that he was delighted to be done with what he considered to be an instrument of torture.

Dr. Early received his Bachelor of Science in pulp and paper manufacturing in 1943 from the New York State College of Forestry in Syracuse. After serving in the Army, he went to graduate school at Ohio State University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951.

In addition to his daughter Mary Beth Early, who lives in Brooklyn, he is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mary Agnes, and seven other children, Kathleen Early of Tassajara, Calif.; Joan Farrell of Ocean City, N.J.; Rhoda Alexander of Menlo Park, Calif.; Maureen Matthews and Rosemary Early, both of Campbell, Calif.; James M. Early Jr. of Mountain View, Calif.; Margot Early of Ridgway, Colo.; and 11 grandchildren. Also surviving are eight brothers and sisters, Joe Early, Mary Beth O'Neill and Kathleen Eccles, all of Syracuse; John Early of Sterling, N.J.; Rhoda Corcoran of Fresno, Calif.; Frank Early of Lakewood, Colo.; Jane Early of Bradenton Beach, Fla.; and Larry Early of Madera, Calif.


JAMES EARLY
Palo Alto, Calif.
January 12, 2004
PALO ALTO, Calif. — James M. Early, 81, husband of the former Mary Agnes Valentine of Logan, passed away after a long illness on January 12, 2004, in Palo Alto, Calif.
Dr. Early was well known in the field of semiconductor engineering, held 14 patents, and was a fellow of the IEEE.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, eight children and eleven grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions be sent to Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, 2625 Zamker Road, San Jose, CA 95134.
Roller Hapgood & Tinney Funeral Directors of Palo Alto, Calif., is in charge of the arrangements.
Notice entered Saturday, January 17, 2004.

http://www.rpi.edu/~schubert/More%20reprints/2001%20Early%20(IEEE-TED)%20An%20early%20history%20of%20transistors.pdf

 

James M. Early (A’48–SM’54–F’59–LF’88) was born in Syracuse, NY, in 1922. He received the B.S. degree in pulp and paper manufacturing from New York State College of Forestry, Syracuse in 1943 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Ohio State University (OSU), Columbus, in 1948 and 1951, respectively.

He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945.

In 1951, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, NJ, as Member of Technical Staff. He worked on grown and alloy germanium transistors, germanium diffused base transistors, silicon diffused transistors, solar cells for Telstar, and integrated circuits. After 18 years at Bell Laboratories, the last seven as a Laboratory Director (Murray Hill 1962–1964, Allentown, PA

1964–1969), he joined Fairchild Camera and Instrument at Palo Alto, CA. There, he was Director of Semiconductor Research from 1969 to 1983 and a Technical Advisor to the vice-president of research from 1983 to his retirement in 1986. At Fairchild, he was directly responsible for processes as well as devices. He pushed Fairchild into the use of ion beam implantation, whole wafer lithography, electron beam mask-making, and CCD device development. He contributed technically to bipolar memories, fast ECL circuit technology, CMOS without guard rings, and many CCD projects. He holds about a dozen patents, has published 12 or more papers, and given scores of talks.

Dr. Early is a Fellow of AAAS and a member of APS. He has received the Texnikoi and Distinguished Alumnus Awards from OSU and the J. J. Ebers Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society. He served IEEE and its IRE predecessor on the first transistor standardization committees, on many meeting and program committees, and was active in the annual device research conferences.

He served the Advisory Group on Electron Devices (Department of Defense) for 20 years, retiring in 1982 after six years as chairman of the main panel of advisors.

About the author:

I was born and raised in Syracuse, NY, second child and second son in a family of nine children blessed my marvelous parents and limited but adequate resources. An outstanding high school physics teacher, the late John Condon, gave me my start in technical analysis. I attended the NY State College of Forestry, from which I received a B. Sc. in 1943, specializing in pulp and paper manufacturing. The forestry college taught us well, with long hours and long work. At Ohio State while in the U.S. Army, I found electrical engineering easier and more interesting than the paper industry. Enrolling at Ohio Sate full time (including four years as full-time instructor) after the second World War, I received the M.Sc. and eventually the PhD. in 1951. In graduate school, my advisors, Profs. E. M. Boone and D. J. Kraus wisely gave me almost no guidance in my thesis and dissertation. Through their restraint and encouragement, I became used to choosing and defining my own analytical problems and approaches. I was grateful to them. Looking back, I am even more grateful.

In early September of 1951, Bell Laboratories gave a one week introductory transistor in Princeton, NJ. Shockley’s book was our prime text. In this world I was young, short on self-confidence, and much in awe of our instructors.

There, one day, Shockley told of his then recently-proposed junction field effect transistor. He drew on the board postulated drain voltage characteristics in which the drain current at fixed gate-to-source voltage would initially rise with diminishing slope as it does in actual devices. After saturation is reached, he indicated, the current would gradually cut off, falling to zero.

With some trepidation I questioned this, proposing that the drain current could not fall because it was involved in bringing the channel-to-gate voltage to the pinch-off point. He thought for a very short time, agreed, and changed the characteristic to the false pinch-off region we are familiar with. We never talked of the matter again, but he was always cordial and treated me as a technical peer. The incident probably helped my self-confidence in dealing with semiconductor theory."

Mary Agnes, my beloved wife, and I have been blessed with two and a half dozen children (that’s right, 2+6=8), of whom seven, including the youngest are daughters.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author is grateful to his many collaborators over the years, who helped make his work in transistor technology development both fulfilling and enjoyable. This account was developed from material presented at the 1992 Device Research Conference [1], [2]. The author is also very grateful to Peter Asbeck for encouragement to put this talk in print, editing it with sensible emendations and clarifications. Thank you, Peter!

REFERENCES

[1] J. M. Early, "Classic semiconductor devices-point contact through HSI;

Solving easy problems," IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 39, p. 263,

Nov. 1992.

[2] , "Classic semiconductor devices-point contact through HSI; Solving easy problems," in 50th Annu. Device Res. Conf., Cambridge, MA, June 22–24, 1992.

 

 

James M. Early (A’48–SM’54–F’59–LF’88) was

born in Syracuse, NY, in 1922. He received the B.S.

degree in pulp and paper manufacturing from New

York State College of Forestry, Syracuse in 1943 and

the M.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from

Ohio State University (OSU), Columbus, in 1948

and 1951, respectively.

He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945.

In 1951, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories at

Murray Hill, NJ, as Member of Technical Staff. He

worked on grown and alloy germanium transistors,

germanium diffused base transistors, silicon diffused transistors, solar cells

for Telstar, and integrated circuits. After 18 years at Bell Laboratories, the

last seven as a Laboratory Director (Murray Hill 1962–1964, Allentown, PA

1964–1969), he joined Fairchild Camera and Instrument at Palo Alto, CA.

There, he was Director of Semiconductor Research from 1969 to 1983 and a

Technical Advisor to the vice-president of research from 1983 to his retirement

in 1986. At Fairchild, he was directly responsible for processes as well as

devices. He pushed Fairchild into the use of ion beam implantation, whole

wafer lithography, electron beam mask-making, and CCD device development.

He contributed technically to bipolar memories, fast ECL circuit technology,

CMOS without guard rings, and many CCD projects. He holds about a dozen

patents, has published 12 or more papers, and given scores of talks.

Dr. Early is a Fellow of AAAS and a member of APS. He has received the

Texnikoi and Distinguished Alumnus Awards from OSU and the J. J. Ebers

Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society. He served IEEE and its IRE

predecessor on the first transistor standardization committees, on many meeting

and program committees, and was active in the annual device research conferences.

He served the Advisory Group on Electron Devices (Department of Defense)

for 20 years, retiring in 1982 after six years as chairman of the main panel

of advisors.


James M. Early was born (July 25, 1922) in Syracuse, New York, second of the nine children of Rhoda G. Early and the late Frank J. Early. He received the B.S. in Pulp and Paper Manufacturing in 1943 from the New York State College of Forestry (Syracuse). After army service at Ohio State University and the Manhattan Engineer District, Oak Ridge, Tenn., he returned to O.S.U. as a graduate student and instructor in Electrical Engineering. He received the M.S. (magnetron resonances) in 1948 and the Ph.D. (anisotropic dielectric waveguides) in 1951.

He joined Bell Laboratories in September 1951. During his eighteen years at Bell, he created much of the design theory of bipolar transistors, discovered the effects of space-charge layer widening ("Early effect"), created the oscillator transistor for the first U.S. satellite, led development of solar cells and transistors for Telstar I, and led the development of sealed junction technology as part of Bell Lab's first major IC work, ending his Bell Labs service as Director of the Electron Device Laboratory at Allentown, Pa. He joined Fairchild in September 1969 as leader of their research and development work. Under his direction and often with his significant personal contributions, Fairchild Research Center created the isoplanar bipolar process and the prototype of the its isoplanar memory products, created the buried channel CCD imagers which have revolutionized low light level electronic imaging, created the prototypes of the 4000C series of 15 volt CMOS, created the 100K series of ECL, and contributed to the creation of FAST. His leadership brought Fairchild the first ion implanter in a merchant semiconductor manufacturing company (1970) and the first commercial electron beam mask-making machine (MEBES 1 - 1977). He became a technical adviser in mid-1983 and retired from Fairchild at the end of 1986.

He is a fellow of IEEE (1958), a member of APS, AAAS, and Sigma XI. His IEEE service includes the Fellow Committee, ED Adcom, ED Transactions, IEEE PROCEEDINGS, and SPECTRUM. He is an IEEE representative on the Fritz Medal committee of the IEEE.

He has published numerous technical papers and holds fourteen patents.

He was associated with the Advisory Group on Electron Devices (ODDR&E) since 1962 to 1982 and was its chairman for four years.

Jim and his wife, Mary Agnes, of 42 happy years live in Palo Alto, California. Their pastimes include duplicate bridge, bicycling, swimming, and reading.


 

Early Effect  [ELECTRONICS] A change in the base width of a bipolar transistor as a function of base-collector bias voltage.
---------

Base width modulation (the Early effect)

    is the modulation of the base width by the voltage appearing across the base-collector junction. An increase in the base to collector voltage increases the collector junction depletion layer width, which results in the narrowing of the base width.

-----------


http://semiconductorglossary.com/default.asp?searchterm=Early+effect

Early effect  base-width reduction in a bipolar transistor due to the widening of the base-collector junction with increasing base-collector voltage. Early effect may be observed on output characteristics (collector current versus base-collector voltage) as a slight increase of the collector current in the saturation region.

 


James Early2472 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 48, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2001

 

 

 

fairness to all

 

don't make off color comments.

 

equality 

 

my name is out there where it needs to be.

 

We had a good time!

Jim Early, after whom the famous "Early effect" in named, is one of the invited contributors. In his paper, Jim has quoted some versus from a song entitled "Hell's Bells Laboratory" written by Professor Ian Mackintosh. This just reinforces the realization that we are humans first and then technical professionals. As such, human aspects surrounding history making technical inventions, such as the TRANSISTOR, are very important to us. In here, you will find a hyperlink to the recording of the actual performance of this composition.

The first performance of this work of art was given at the Device Research Conference in Boulder Colorado in 1957 and played later at several EDS sponsored technical conferences. Many times we have been asked that this be shared on a wider basis with all EDS members. Hopefully, this web based publication will meet this request. Regarding some of the verbiage used in the lyrics, I would urge listeners to take it as a true reflection of history, giving them a first hand view of the social scene in those days. Please click here on Ian's gift (MP3 File - please contact your local computer administrator to get the appropriate plug in) to make the song come alive.

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/eds/hellsbells64.mp3

 

 

 


Awards.

IEEE Grade of Fellow

JAMES M. EARLY

1959    For contributions in the development of high frequency transistors.

_______


 

EDS J.J. Ebers Award

This award was established in 1971 with the intention to foster progress in electron devices and to commemorate the life activities of Jewell James Ebers, whose distinguished contributions, particularly in the transistor art, shaped the understanding and technology of electron devices. It is presented annually to honor an individual(s) who has made either a single or a series of contributions of recognized scientific, economic, or social significance in the broad field of electron devices. The recipient(s) is awarded a certificate and check for $5,000, presented at the International Electron Devices Meeting

 
1979
James M. Early
"For Outstanding Technical Contributions to Electron Devices
 

_______

 

Ohio State University College of Engineernig Texnikoi Award

Texnikoi is an organization of undergraduate students in the College of Engineering whose purpose is to recognize qualities of leadership, integrity, and personality as exemplified by active participation and leadership in extracurricular activities. Each year the active membership of Texnikoi selects one of the younger alumni of the College of Engineering as a recipient of the Texnikoi Outstanding Alumna/us Award. This award is based upon their achievements since graduation, evaluated in light of the objectives of Texnikoi.

1967 Dr. James M. Early, EE ’48

 


 

 

 


 

 

Engineering Hall of Fame - Electronic Design Magazine Dec-2011

 

 

 

 

 


Historic Bell Telephone Laboratories Monographs

 

(#2097) Effects of Space-Charge Layer Widening in Junction Transistors  

(#2201) Design Theory of Junction Transistors  

(#2244) P-N-I-P and N-P-I-N Junction Transistor Triodes  

____

#2952. B.E.Deal, J.M.Early, The evolution of silicon semiconductor technology: 1952-1977 J. Electrochem. Soc. 126 1 (1979) 20C-32C

 

____

2468
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 48, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2001

#2468 -  IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 48, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2001

Out to Murray Hill to Play: An

Early History of Transistors

James M. Early, Life Fellow, IEEE

http://www.rpi.edu/~schubert/More%20reprints/2001%20Early%20(IEEE-TED)%20An%20early%20history%20of%20transistors.pdf

_____

J. M. Early, "Classic semiconductor devices-point contact through HSI; Solving easy problems,
" IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 39, p. 263,
Nov. 1992.

 

 

 

 

 


K. D. Smith - Memories 
By James M. Early

http://www.smecc.org/k_d__smith_memories_by_j_m__early.htm

____________

Telstar I - Dawn of a New Age  - J. M. Early 1990
 
- from SMEC Vintage Electrics Volume #2 1990

http://www.smecc.org/james_early___telstar.htm


 

 
 

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