Siliconix

Siliconix Inc., later Temic Siliconix Inc. was a pioneering American semiconductor company known for its MOSFET designs. Now a subsidiary brand of Vishay, it was founded by Frances and Bill Hugle in 1962.

History

Siliconix was incorporated on March 5, 1962, by husband and wife Frances and Bill Hugle and Richard Lee. The Hugles were well known in the semiconductor industry for the works of their previous companies that specialized in optical encoding and circuit production, including at the Baldwin Piano Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. Baldwin later gave the Hugles the capital to raise Siliconix in 1962; also contributing startup capital was the Electronic Engineering Company (EECO) of Santa Ana, California. Lee, meanwhile, had previously worked at Texas Instruments before leaving to cofound Siliconix. At Siliconix, the founders focused on field-effect transistor (FET) design and manufacturing while most other companies were still using bipolar junction transistor (BJT) designs. First products of the company were P-channel junction FETs, N-channel junction FETs, MOSFETs, FET arrays, and power MOSFETs.

The Hugles went on to found and invest in a number of other electronics companies following the incorporation of Siliconix. Frances Hugle died on May 24, 1968, following a six-month-long illness. By the early 1970s, Bill Hugle's role in Siliconix had largely diminished as he began focusing on a political career as the Democratic nominee for California's 12th congressional district. Lee remained principally responsible for Siliconix's day-to-day operations until the mid-1980s, when he expanded the company's executive leadership. Bill Hugle lost the nomination in 1972 and was later charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1983 of committing espionage in collaboration with a spy for the Polish People's Republic in the early 1970s. A grand jury found Hugle not guilty in 1985. He died in 2003.

Throughout the 1980s, Siliconix coasted on the success of its original FET designs, as well as custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), shirking off developing microprocessors and microcontrollers as many other semiconductor pioneers had attempted and either found success or went bankrupt. Through to at least 1985, Siliconix never reported a single quarterly loss. By the late 1980s, however, sales began to flounder, and a patent infringement suit lost against International Rectifier forced Siliconix to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989. They were acquired by TEMIC, a business unit of the German Telefunken company, who renamed the company Temic Siliconix Inc., who pivoted the company toward power management ICs for microcomputers and motion controller chips for hard disk drive controller boards.

In 1997, Vishay started to buy Siliconix stock from various shareholders and practically completed the acquisition of the entire company by 2005.

References

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1962 establishments in California
2005 disestablishments in California
American companies established in 1962
American companies disestablished in 2005
Computer companies established in 1962
Computer companies disestablished in 2005
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States
Defunct computer hardware companies