The Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratory’s Photolithographic Approach to Microcircuits

From 1952 to 1958, Jay Lathrop worked on a project at the National Bureau of Standards (later the US Army Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratory) to develop microminiaturized, transistorized hybrid integrated circuits for radio proximity fuzes. In this article, Lathrop describes his experiences during this project, the development of photolithography, and how photolithography became critical in the first efforts to produce semiconductor ICs.