Historic 1962 Fairchild 2N1613 Transistor: The First Planar Device Ever Produced

Description

For sale is one genuine 1962 Fairchild 2N1613 in mint condition.
Not just any transistor, the 2N1613 was a historic milestone and
is the device that opened the door to the manufacture of modern electronics.
It was the very first device constructed by the planar process that virtually all modern integrated circuits are based on.
Well over fifty years old they have been in an unopened box since the year they were made.
Early Fairchild transistors have a three digit date code. Digit 1 represents the year, and digit 2-3 represent the week. These 2N1613s have a 1962 31st week date and the box they came from is marked as a contract item purchased by Raytheon in October of 1962. They are the very same Fairchild transistors featured at semiconductormuseum.com and computerhistory.org.
Planar Process Development
Fairchild Semiconductor's core was formed by eight former Shockley Semiconductor employees. Fairchild started out small, building germanium transistors.
In the late 1950s Raytheon corporation was in development of a long range ballistic missile, later to be known as the Minuteman 1. The high shock and vibration made the missile a very hostile environment for sensitive electronics. A young Fairchild physicist named Jean Hoerni was working on the many reliability problems plaguing semiconductors used in the missile. It was discovered that failures were being caused by contamination inside the metal can packages shorting the junctions. He visualized and developed a process in silicon instead of germanium to solve those problems. In January of 1959
he wrote a patent disclosure
and demonstrated a working silicon planar transistor that March.
The process involves forming transistor junctions through a series of photographic exposure, chemical etching, and doping techniques on a slab of polished silicon. A layer of silicon dioxide (glass) is then grown over the surface to protect the junctions. The protective layer is etched to form windows in the glass to the buried transistors. Metal connections are then added to complete the circuit.
The Fairchild 2N1613 went commercial in 1960.
Hoerni's new process made the transistor rugged and long lived enough to meet requirements for the aerospace industry. The planar process was also key to the manufacture of integrated circuits.
Jack Kilby may have gotten credit for the integrated circuit invention, but it was Fairchild that made it practical to manufacture it.
The silicon planar break-though of the 2N1613 quickly took them from12 to 12,000 employees and birthed silicon valley.
The planar process virtually made the germanium transistor and all other semiconductor manufacturing techniques obsolete within months.
Fairchild went on to create the first planar integrated circuits, called micrologic. The first ICs ever mass-produced were three input NOR gate used in the Block 1
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC)
.
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