IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2018 - 18

Even the chosen venue (Philadelphia in
February) seemed to fit in with the
conference's Spartan character.
figured out for themselves where demand for their services had suddenly
blossomed. Even the conference hotel contributed to the mystique; with
just three elevators, it wasn't designed to accommodate the surge of
traffic the ISSCC generated.
The month and venue had a more
practical downside, virtually daring
the weather to create transportation
disasters. Each year, the conference
would somehow escape-that is,
until 1975! February 1975 provided a
monster ice storm that closed down
every single airport in the northeastern United States. Attendance plummeted! I remember it well; I was the
Program Committee chair that year.
Understand, I didn't feel personally
responsible for the ice storm; however, I also didn't relish the idea of
having my name forever associated
with the only year the conference
lost money.
But I hadn't reckoned on the
resourcefulness of Treasurer Bob
Mayer. As I mentioned earlier, Bob
didn't think "his" conference should
ever lose money, and he promptly put
on a virtuoso performance of creative
accounting. He finished by closing the
books in record time, subsequently
"discovering" that some additional
bills had come in "late." Never mind:
"they would be paid by the next year's
conference." Back in those days,
ISSCC's parentage was so varied and
diffuse that no single sponsor had responsibility for auditing the books ... so
they weren't audited.

The Transition Years
By the late 1960s, the center of semiconductor development had begun
shifting west, and the international

W i n t e r 2 0 18

nature of the conference was coming
into sharper focus. Attendees from
western states became increasingly
vocal about shifting the conference
to San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, however, the founders preferred the
mystique of their Philadelphia home.
As a compromise, for about ten
years, the ISSCC alternated between
San Francisco on the West Coast and
either Philadelphia or New York City
on the East Coast. Then, in 1990, San
Francisco became the conference's
permanent home.
By the mid 1970s, Lew Winner
was the effectively the conference's
general business manager. His actual
title was "Public Relations," which he
kept to the end-and well beyond the
point when it was anywhere near a full
description of his duties. He worked
Herculean hours for a modest fee. His
ability to resist sleep deprivation was
storied, and his self-effacing persona
steadily evolved into the "resident curmudgeon" and "holy terror" of the conference. As the other business leaders
retired and for reasons of continuity,
the Executive Committee was reorganized, with Jack Raper as its multiyear
chair. Jack was Lew's perfect foil. The
very essence of a diplomatic Englishman, Jack could have negotiated an
armistice between the Hatfields and
the McCoys. This meant that Lew now
had complete license to step on nearly
everyone's toes-and so he did.

Expansion in the Modern Era
In 1988, as Lew approached his final
days with the conference, it became
clear that his many duties urgently
needed to be decentralized and dispersed. I was appointed Jack Raper's
successor and joined first by John

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

Wuorinen, who served as editor of
the digest, and then by an enlarged
and longer-tenured Executive Committee. Since that time, the ISSCC has
had just three other executive chairs,
John Trnka, Timothy Tredwell, and
Ananatha Chandrakasan, each of
whom has overseen major expansions
in conference offerings. No modern
conference can survive based on the
premises of 65 years earlier. Much of
the modern ISSCC was unimagined
(and possibly even unimaginable)
by the founding pioneers. Conference features added in the last three
decades include short courses, short
papers, tutorials, visual supplements,
a technical book display, forums,
live industry demonstrations, and
student papers. Rather than present
a detailed yearly evolution, I invite
you to read the companion article
in this issue, describing the modern
ISSCC, "Through the Looking Glass-
The 2018 Edition" by Denis C. Daley,
Laura C. Fujino, and Kenneth C. Smith.
The images that follow, in "A Pictorial Journey of Through ISSCCs from
1954 Through 1985," along with those
on the cover, come from the conference's archives, starting with the very
first Conference on Transistor Circuits
in 1954. These include such memorabilia as registration materials and photos of the early organizers.
The ISSCC has a very long track
record for a technology conference.
To do so, it clearly has had to adapt to
both technology and the times. Now,
just look how the registration prices
have changed!

About the Author
David Pricer (pricer@wcvt.com) is
an IEEE Life Fellow. His professional
IEEE activities include serving as
chair of the International Solid-State
Circuits Conference, editor of IEEE
Journal of Solid-State Circuits, and
president of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2018