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Biograhic Note
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Archer Mohr worked for RCA for
32 yrs, from 1949 to 1981. He held various positions during this time
including design engineering and engineering leader at Harrison and
Somerville, production and manufacturing manager at the newly opened
semiconductor plant at Mountaintop Pa, and plant manager at the RCA
Semiconductor plant in Liege Belgium in the early 1970’s. Arch Mohr’s work
spans three decades of semiconductor developments and his Oral History,
recorded in Jan 2001, provides excellent insight into the rapid
developemnts during that time.
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This photo shows a close-up of the
2N72 point contact transistor from 1953/54. According to Mr. Mohr, “The
major work on the point contact transistor was the result of a Signal Corps
Industrial Preparedness Contract. From this came the 2N72. The object of
the contract was to build a manufacturing capacity for 20K (?) units/mo.
& demonstrate the production capability by a production run of 2K. To
the best of my knowledge, no further work was done on point contact
transistors at RCA after this initial run of 2000 units”. Dimensions of
the metal cased unit are 5/16” X 6/16”.
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Oral History – Arch Mohr
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Shortly
after I joined the receiving tube design section in Harrison, N.J. in late
1951, I was assigned product design work on point contact Transistors,
continuing the advanced development work of Bob Slade. I made
developmental samples for customer sampling and spent considerable time in
testing samples and developing specifications. In 1952 or'53, RCA received
a Signal Corps Industrial Preparedness Contract for a point contact
transistor. This resulted in the development of the 2N72. After the
required production run of 2000 (if I recall correctly), no more 2N72's
were made.
After
completion of the Sig. Corps Contract, I worked on the development of
various germanium alloy transistors--including the type mentioned by
Charley Mueller in hos Oral History. It was during this time that RCA
established the Semiconductor Division and built the Somerville N.J.
plant. In the mid 1950s, RCA received another Sig. Corps Industrial
Preparedness Contract to develop 5 different power transistors--a 1 watt
npn ge. transistor, a 1 watt pnp ge. trans. and 3 silicon power transistors
(1 watt, 5 watt, and 10 watt if I remember correctly). I was named the
engineering leader on the contract. Germanium alloying processes were well
established by this time so that most of the effort involved package design
( a small TO-3 package resulted) and establishing the final
specifications. These 2 ge. alloy transistors became the 2N1183 &
2N1184.
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