IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2018 - 17

Circuits, and even "the Philadelphia
Conference" (for its initial location).
It would take another seven years
to sort out the title, with "International"
added in 1960. It took even longer to
sort out just what the term solid-state
meant. Early conference topics featured
transistor circuits, of course, (integrated circuits weren't invented yet)
but also cryogenics, thick- and thin-film
magnetic circuits, and even pneumatic
circuits. It seemed for a time that solidstate circuits meant anything that didn't
involve a vacuum tube.
The privacy practices imposed
then seem quaint today. The first conference published a full list of all 601
attendees, a list that today reads like
a "Who's Who" of transistor pioneers.
Much of the early impetus for the
conference appears to have come from
Prof. J.G. Brainerd of the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The first
organizing meeting was held 15 September 1953 at the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) headquarters in New York
City and was attended by H.J. Carlin,
J.G. Linvill, M. Dishal, and J.J. Suran-
all members of particular IRE entities.
Cosponsorship was soon extended to
entities within the American Institute
of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). (The IRE
and AIEE would merge in 1962 to form
today's IEEE.) The organizers remember
their motivations differently. Most simply thought the time had come!
Murlin Corrington was the original
treasurer and, thereafter, long-time
chair of the Sponsors Committee.
Murlin told me that at least one of the
original sponsors had a covert motive.
At the time, his local IRE Chapter carried out a very lucrative practice that
involved teaching expensive courses
(Murlin called it a "racket"). But there
was an obvious hole in the Chapter's
curriculum: they had no transistor course
and no transistor course materials;
there just weren't any available. The
local Chapter thought that sponsoring
the conference would help create the
missing course materials. Murlin would
go on to play an outsized role the formative years of the conference.
Bob Mayer almost immediately
replaced Murlin as the long-term trea-

Much of the early impetus for the conference
appears to have come from Prof. J.G. Brainerd
of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
surer. A participant from Sun Oil might
seem an odd contributor to a transistor conference. However, at the time,
Sun Oil had a sizable patent portfolio
in transistor circuits. Bob was a skilled
treasurer with a singularly focused
goal: "his" conference was never going
to lose money. And it didn't.
Henry Sparks became the Local
Arrangements Committee chair. Henry
knew the conference site well, as a
resident of Philadelphia and a representative of the University of Pennsylvania, which was one of the founding
sponsors of the conference (its name
remained on the ISSCC emblem for
many years).
Perhaps the most interesting character during these early years was Lew
Winner. When Lew was hired in 1956
to provide some editorial oversight to
the digest, he was so timid and selfeffacing he didn't even put his name
on the publication. (His persona would
steadily evolve.)
For three decades, then, these four
individuals (Murlin Corrington, Bob
Mayer, Henry Sparks, and Lew Winner)
provided most of the direction and
the business acumen for the conference's development. The new conference stood out for its Spartan ways: a
rigorous two-and-a-half-day program
devoted strictly to quality technical
papers. No social hour or industrial
exhibits were allowed. The sponsors
had seen too many rival conferences
sublimated by their own exhibits.
Even the chosen venue (Philadelphia
in February) seemed to fit in with the
conference's Spartan character.
The original Program Committee
was drawn largely from the IRE's
4.10. The number "4" designated this
as a subcommittee of the IRE's Circuit
Theory Group. In those days, subcommittees were chartered more or
less exclusively to write standards.
The 4.10 quickly assumed a "buccaneer" reputation and was allegedly

the only so-called standards committee with no intention of ever writing a standard. It was purposefully
organized so that no more than one
member represented any given company. This, it was said, would help
keep the members from getting fired
by their employers for what they
were discussing! In the early years,
the Program Committee had to reorganize itself annually to cope with
the plethora of papers that could fit
under the aforementioned-and very
wide-"solid-state" umbrella.
The program of the first conference in February 1954 included
papers from just six organizations:
Bell Telephone Laboratories, General
Electric, RCA, Philco, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the
University of Pennsylvania. There
was no equivalent to today's ISSCC
Digest of Technical Papers. Attendees
received a booklet of abstracts. A few
authors thoughtfully brought along
some copies of their papers, but the
supply of hard copies quickly ran
out. Projection equipment was supplied by some locally based Program
Committee members.

The "Philadelphia Mystique"
For it first 25 years, the ISSCC met
religiously every February in Philadelphia. That was for reasons of history,
sponsorship, and implied dedication
and sincerity. Why hold a conference
in Philadelphia in February for any but
the most noble of reasons? Attendees
braved cold, slush, ice, and, for many,
a long walk between the conference
hotel and the University of Pennsylvania campus.
Each year, Local Arrangements
Chair Henry Sparks would alert the
Philadelphia taxi companies of the
coming transportation crisis. And,
each year, the taxi companies would
ignore his warnings. By the final day
of the conference, the taxi drivers had

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