General Micro-electronics

General Micro-electronics (GMe) was an American <a href="/facts/Semiconductor/zFf3mGTE">semiconductor</a> company in the 1960s. It was formed by three former members of <a href="/facts/Fairchild_Semiconductor/TUD8v4P0">Fairchild Semiconductor</a>, and is thus one of the "Fairchildren". It was acquired in 1966 by <a href="/facts/Philco-Ford/uJs9yv81">Philco-Ford</a> and became their Microelectronics Division.
With <a href="/facts/Frank_Wanlass/KH8KerJI">Frank Wanlass</a> as director of research and engineering, GMe was the first company to design, fabricate, and sell <a href="/facts/MOSFET/eTDJT2Km">MOS</a> <a href="/facts/Integrated_circuits/fjn6vg7C">integrated circuits</a>. The first MOS chips were <a href="/facts/Small-scale_integration/fjn6vg7C">small-scale integrated</a> chips for <a href="/facts/NASA/TIMCV0yV">NASA</a> satellites. In 1964, Wanlass demonstrated a single-chip 16-bit shift register he designed, with an incredible (for the time) 120 transistors on a single chip.
That same year, the company entered an agreement to convert a <a href="/facts/Victor_Comptometer/F0errNWH">Victor Comptometer</a> tube-based <a href="/facts/Electronic_calculator/eeLfRS8L">electronic calculator</a> to all-IC form, the <a href="/facts/Victor_3900/S9yT1QPc">Victor 3900</a>, with a planned introduction in early 1966. The task proved to be much more difficult than expected, and GMe was left almost insolvent. The company was purchased by <a href="/facts/Philco-Ford/uJs9yv81">Philco-Ford</a>, at which time Victor gave up on the product. They remarketed the system as the Philco 3900, but by the time it was ready for market, a less-expensive alternative had appeared.
Several members of the GMe team would go on to found <a href="/facts/Electronic_Arrays/umze6MtL">Electronic Arrays</a> and produce a six-chip calculator system that was successful in the early 1970s.

General Micro-electronics open-in-new

General Micro-electronics