Julius Blank was an American semiconductor pioneer.
25 Facts About Julius Blank
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Julius Blank's father made musical-instrument cases and luggage, and worked as a Russian translator.
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Julius Blank attended Erasmus Hall High School, graduating at 15.
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Julius Blank began taking classes at City College of New York while working at various jobs.
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Julius Blank reported for active duty on July 5,1943.
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Julius Blank was transferred to the Air Corps to serve as a machinist for airplane parts to overhaul radial engines.
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Julius Blank held a variety of positions during the war, gaining considerable experience in the practicalities of general engineering.
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Julius Blank then moved to Goodyear Aircraft, where he worked from 1951 to 1952 on a wide variety of research and design projects including aircraft propulsion, air ship fabrics, parachutes, and submarines.
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Julius Blank worked as a troubleshooter for a plating room, where he gained practical experience in metal finishing and the use of acids and chemicals.
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Two of the people Julius Blank worked with at Western Electric were Dean Knapic and Eugene Kleiner.
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Julius Blank was a Senior Staff Engineer from 1956 to 1957.
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Julius Blank eventually built a conventional crystal grower based on the Czochralski process instead.
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Julius Blank worked at Shockley Semiconductor until he and others, later dubbed the "traitorous eight", left to form the influential Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation.
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Julius Blank indicated that he personally had not had problems with Shockley, but that Shockley's treatment of others was disturbing.
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Julius Blank found the company's first home, a 14,000 square foot building at 844 Charleston Road, between Palo Alto and Mountain View.
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Kleiner and Julius Blank were in charge of transforming the empty building into usable spaces for production, research and offices.
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Julius Blank became responsible for establishing manufacturing facilities for the company in Hong Kong and other countries.
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Julius Blank was aware of the challenges of starting up a business in another country, both socially and physically.
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At Fairchild, Julius Blank was part of the team that established a "model for entrepreneurs for the rest of [the 20th] century": stock options, no job titles and open working relationships.
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In 1969, Julius Blank decided to leave Fairchild and become a consultant to new startup companies.
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Julius Blank was the last of the original eight founding members to leave Fairchild.
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In 1978, Julius Blank co-founded Xicor, where he was a member of its board of directors.
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In 2011, Julius Blank lived in a retirement center across the street from the old Fairchild headquarters at 844 Charleston Road in Palo Alto, where he used to have his office.
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Julius Blank died on September 17,2011, in Los Altos Hills, California.
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Julius Blank was survived by two sons, Jeffrey and David, and two grandsons.