BUILDING ON THE PAST, READY FOR THE FUTURE: - MEMC

Moore’S lAW
Monsanto grew and
acquired other companies.
One of particular note was
the Thomas & Hochwalt
Laboratories in Dayton, Ohio, which
Monsanto purchased in 1936. It was
in Dayton that several of MEMC’s
pioneers, Drs. Robert Walsh and
Wallene Derby among them, got their
start performing research on gallium
arsenide for the manufacture of light
emitting diodes (LED). Eventually, the
Dayton lab relocated to Monsanto’s
world headquarters in St. Louis,
Missouri.
In 1959, Monsanto broke ground at
the St. Peters plant site cementing its
commitment to the silicon wafer industry.
The developments in silicon technology
that took place at the St. Peters plant in the
coming years would form the foundation
for a technological explosion that continues
to this day.
Sources:
http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/index.html
http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/kilby.htm
http://www.computerhistory.org
www.semi.org/en/P043595
Gordon Moore, for whom Moore’s Law is named, started his career at Shockley Labs in 1956
and went on to co-found Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. widely
known for his 1965 prediction that the number of transistors on a computer chip would double
approximately every year, he refers to this prediction as “a wild extrapolation of very little
data.” Though his original prediction was only for the ensuing ten-year period, he reviewed it
in 1975 and, based on technological advancements at that time, adjusted it to doubling every
twenty-four months and extended it for another ten years. Asked about the future durability of
Moore’s Law, he said, “We’re getting pretty close to molecular dimensions in the devices we’re
making now, and that’s going to become a fundamental limit in how we can continue to shrink
things. So, it’s going to change after another two or three process generations—I don’t know
exactly when.”
The Birth of Technology 13