James M. Early (July 25, 1922 – January 12, 2004) was an American electrical engineer, best known for his work on

transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...

s and

charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...

imagers. He was also known as Jim Early.

Biography

He was born on July 25, 1922, in Syracuse, New York. He received an MSE degree (1948) and his Ph.D. (1951) all from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

. The Early effect in

bipolar junction transistor A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a type of transistor that uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. In contrast, a unipolar transistor, such as a field-effect transistor, uses only one kind of charge carrier. A bipola ...

s is named after Jim Early, who first characterized it and published a paper on it in 1952. The Early effect in bipolar junction transistors is due to an effective decrease in the base width because of the widening of the base-collector depletion region, resulting in an increase in the collector current with an increase in the collector voltage. The same type of length modulation in MOSFETs is also commonly referred to as Early effect. Early was the first to make a transistor that would oscillate faster than "a thousand megacycles" (1 GHz), circa 1952, for which feat he won a bottle of Scotch whisky from

John Robinson Pierce John Robinson Pierce (March 27, 1910 – April 2, 2002), was an American engineer and author. He did extensive work concerning radio communication, microwave technology, computer music, psychoacoustics, and science fiction. Additionally to hi ...

. He also developed the transistors for America's first commercial communications satellite, the Telstar I. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow. In the early 1970s, Early led research for Fairchild Semiconductor, where he invented the vertical anti-blooming drain for CCD image sensors. He died on January 12, 2004, at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

References

External links

Memorial page
at Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation 1922 births 2004 deaths American electrical engineers 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors Ohio State University alumni {{US-electrical-engineer-stub