Ed explains how he was hired by Fairchild in 1959 because he had a materials background with a MS in Physical Metallurgy.  Ed asked a lot of questions about their production processes and controls.  He was made a foreman of Fairchild’s production plant on Charleston Ave in Mt View.  Ed later became product manager for the NPN Transistor line.  He had ~100 employees reporting to him at that time.

Fairchild wanted to open a plant outside of CA and selected Portland, Maine.  Ed was the manager of that plant starting in 1964 (our next time period for this panel session).  There were over 1,000 employees.  Ironically, Portland, ME became the headquarters of a new Fairchild in 1997 after it was spun off from National Semiconductor, which had acquired Fairchild ten years before (in 1987).

Read more about this session at: http://sites.ieee.org/sv-techhist/?p=344

[Thanks to Alan Weissberger for the above description.]