#99🚀 Two engineers and a shared destiny
SuperPowers for Electrical Engineers 🦸🏻♂️🦸🏼♀️
👋 Hello, friends! Dr. Molina here 👨🔧
Welcome to my newsletter! Here, on a weekly basis, I share my personal journey of building a company in the power electronics industry and the exciting new insights I gain about the world of Magnetics.
Are you in the Bay Area in North California on November 15th?
We have organized a meet-up with a technical presentation about
How to design a Custom Magnetic
and then a panel with great speakers to discuss some questions like:
- When does it make sense to use Planar Magnetics?
-When an OTS solution is better than a custom?
-What are the main pains of Power Electronic Engineers?
Register here.
About last week…
Last week, I had the fortune of visiting the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley with my family and our new friends in the Valley, Ama and Ben. We started by visiting Google's new Visitor Center, which, having been to other visitor centers, didn't really impress me, to be honest.
However, the museum was the highlight of the day (not forgetting the Indian restaurant where we had lunch, which had amazing food, it's called XY). It takes you through the history of computing, beginning with the most basic calculators and progressing to current video game consoles, with stops along the way for the first computers and operating systems. The museum's entrance fee is $17 per person, and I think I could spend the whole day there (my one-year-old daughter too, although she just wants to play with the Apple I, which isn't allowed).
Returning home after the museum visit, I felt a great motivation and interest in a part of the electronics history we saw there.
Two engineers and a shared destiny
What I found most fascinating about this part is the parallelism in their inventions. Jack Kilby (born November 8, 1923, in Jefferson City, Missouri, U.S.) and Robert Noyce (born December 12, 1927, in Burlington, Iowa, U.S.) invented the integrated circuit in the same time period.
Isn't that incredible? The curious thing is that each of them used a different technology.
In the latter part of August 1958, Jack Kilby showcased the feasibility of a circuit composed entirely of silicon components. However, this circuit had not yet achieved integration. Kilby unveiled the inaugural integrated circuit, constructed using germanium rather than silicon, and roughly the dimensions of a postage stamp on September 12 of that same year.
He conceived his integrated circuit within a mere fortnight while enjoying his summer break.
Around the same period when Kilby pioneered the integrated circuit, Robert Noyce achieved a similar breakthrough. Employed at Fairchild Semiconductor, Noyce created a more intricate integrated circuit using silicon. Although Noyce's circuit received its patent after Kilby's, both individuals are typically acknowledged as co-inventors. Kilby himself promoted this perspective, and when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2000, he proposed that Noyce, who had unfortunately passed away by then, should be posthumously honored and share in the recognition.
When I think about the upcoming technologies that are poised to change the world, it gives me goosebumps. I'm certain that there are many engineers (at least at Frenetic) working very hard to revolutionize the field of energy conversion. What will it be?
This summer, I got excited about superconductors, and I'm still thinking a lot about them, but I believe the future that awaits us is thrilling.
If you're in the Bay Area, come and discuss it on November 15th (write to me for more information).
Until next week!
