Alternative circuits
Brad Thompson, Contributing Technical Editor, brad@tmworld.com -- Test & Measurement World, 4/1/2009 2:00:00 AM
When Dr. Paul Eisler (1907–1995) graduated from the Technical University of Vienna in 1930, anti-Semitic prejudice ensured that no Austrian electronics firm would hire him because of his Jewish heritage. After a stint as a consultant, he helped start a weekly radio journal, and in the process he became acquainted with printing technologies and began to explore their application to mass-producing interconnection circuitry.
An attempted coup d’etat by Austrian Nazis in 1934 failed, but social upheaval put Dr. Eisler out of work again and he emigrated to England in 1936. An executive at Plessey who viewed Eisler’s prototype printed-circuit radio rejected it, stating that the company’s “Assembly work was done by girls, who are cheaper and more flexible....”
When World War II broke out, Eisler vowed to use his invention to help defeat Germany. More demonstrations and rejections followed, until the US National Bureau of Standards adopted the idea for the antiaircraft proximity fuze. Under assault by German V-1 buzz bombs and aircraft, England’s antiaircraft gunners used proximity fuzes to good advantage, shooting down hundreds of V-1s and bombers.
Eisler’s career as an inventor continued after the war. By 1957, Eisler worked as a freelance consultant for several start-up companies, many of which were doomed by economic hard times. Eisler offered a lesson for today: “As money ran out, expenditure for anything new was the first to be cut....”
In the mid-1950s, primitive PCBs (printed-circuit boards) appeared in consumer electronics. Armed only with 140-W soldering guns, service technicians attempted to repair the boards with disastrous results: Copper traces detached from paper-phenolic substrates, and the extraction of multipin components frequently damaged the boards. Technicians disparaged products containing PCBs. In fact, for years afterward, Zenith Electronics boasted that its radios and TVs featured “handcrafted” circuitry and “The quality goes in before the name goes on.” Dr. Eisler’s ill-fated invention faded into well-deserved obscurity.
Nowadays, we can take pride in the tens of millions of nimble-fingered young women and men who patiently hard-wire our computers, portable telephones, test instruments, and the myriad of other electronic appliances that make our information-based culture possible. Where would our industry be without their skilled hands?
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