Name James Buie | ||
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James L. Buie (1920 – September 25, 1988) was an American scientist and inventor who worked for TRW Inc. He refined and developed electronic circuitry to the integrated circuit level. This led to the beginning of the integrated circuit industry.
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Early life
Buie was born in 1920 in Hollywood, California. He served in World War II as an airplane pilot and became a lieutenant commander during his service.
Career
Buie was an electrical engineering graduate of University of Southern California receiving a BSEE in 1950. Buie's first job was at Pacific Semiconductors (PSI) in Culver City, California in 1951. He worked on transistor circuitry as related to diodes and resistors. He was next employed by Ramo-Woolridge Corporation in 1954. Ramo-Woolridge joined with Thompson Automotive Group in 1958 and eventually Thompson-Ramo-Woolridge became known as TRW Inc. Buie was a senior scientist and one of the organizers for TRW's Microelectronics Center that formed in 1963. He headed TRW's large scale integration LSI Products Division in 1977.
Buie invented transistor-to-transistor logic circuitry ("TTL") in 1961 leading to the development of the integrated circuit industry. Buie's technology technique was originally known as transistor-coupled transistor logic – TCTL. The TTL electronics invented by Buie became the electronics industry standard for two decades. The first commercial integrated circuit products using the TTL technology were made by Sylvania in 1963 and known as the Sylvania Universal High-Level Logic family.
Texas Instruments introduced integrated circuits for military applications in 1964. Buie's technology pioneered the development of microelectronics for man-made satellites used in space for the aerospace industry. The integrated circuit technology was used extensively in the 1970s and 1980s in computers, communications, and military equipment. TRW licensed the new technology to other companies to use in data processing and communications electronics. The TTL integrated circuit technology is still used in the electronics industry today.
Innovations and inventions
His innovations in microelectronics included dielectrically isolated integrated circuits, single-chip parallel multipliers, single-chip analog-to-digital converters, and triple-diffused bipolar devices. Some of his inventions are as follows:
Other patents of Buie are "Bipolar transistor construction method" (# 3981072 of 12/6/1974) and "Read-only memory construction and related method" (#4546456 of 6/8/1983).
Societies
Buie was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1973.
Awards
Buie was awarded the United States Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II for action during May 26–31, 1944.
Retirement and death
Buie retired from TRW in 1983. He died in Panorama City September 25, 1988, from emphysema.