After spending five years at the DH Baldwin Piano company developing photocells for optical encoders, Bill and Frances Hugle were ready for a new challenge. According to family records, Bill left for Youngwood, Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh in 1958 to help Westinghouse set up a new cleanroom at its semiconductor fab in that town. Frances followed with their four children in February 1960. However, the Hugles would not stay … Read More → "The Semiconductor Company from Another World: The Siliconix Story, Part 3 – Molecular Electronics"

Bill Hugle and Frances Sarnat married in 1947 after each had earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Chicago. The two started a business making artificial gemstones in 1948, but the venture went bust by 1951 because of a patent infringement lawsuit brought against Bill Hugle by Linde Air Products, which had hired him as a plant chemist in 1947, just before he started his side business with … Read More → "The Semiconductor Company from Another World: The Siliconix Story, Part 2 – Starting the Optical Encoder Industry"