John D. Macdougall

John D. Macdougall begins the interview with a summary of his graduate and doctoral work. In 1966 Macdougall began working at Sprague Electric Company in the research and development department with ion implementation. He built a permanent magnet velocity filter and scanning system upon arriving, which aided in implanting uniformly over the wafer. The second implanter machine he built at Sprague used parts supplied by Accelerators, Inc. Macdougall contributed to work on PNP transistors, working on implants for beta control. He also implanted TTL circuits and linear circuits and aided in the developmental progress of MOS (metal oxide semiconductors) to MOSFETS (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors). He also worked on device characterization and MOS for two military R&D contracts. He worked on a threshold adjust technique, which Robert Palmer created a use for. Macdougall eventually moved to the Worcester facility, before Sprague was sold to General Cable. Macdougall served as a consultant for Sprague until the semiconductor research group dissolved in 1975. He then moved on to engineering management at the Worcester facility of General Cable.

Christophe Lécuyer

Christophe Lécuyer is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and he received a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. He was a fellow of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology and has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Virginia. Before becoming a senior research fellow at CHF, Lécuyer was the program manager of the electronic materials department. He has published widely on the history of electronics, engineering education, and medical and scientific instruments, and is the author of Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930–1970 (2005).