University of Pennsylvania
Department of Physics and Astronomy
High Energy Physics Seminar


Abstract:
THE INVENTION AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE CCD

The Charge Coupled Device (CCD) is an electronic structure used for imaging and related applications. It is essentially a series of capacitors formed on a surface of a semiconductor chip where information in the form of charge is stored and then manipulated by passing the charge from one capacitor to the next. A brief description of the device efforts at Bell Labs prior to the invention of the CCD by Smith and Boyle will be given, along with the chain of thought leading to its conception.

Early device development will be reviewed, current applications outlined, and a few examples of its use in astronomy presented.


Biography




Dr. George E. Smith

George E. Smith received his BS degree in physics from Penn in 1955. He received his PhD. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1959 when he joined the Bell Telephone laboratories.

He is the inventor of the charge coupled device, called the CCD, which has revolutionized computers and optical devices. (All video cameras and modern telescopes use CCD's for optical readout.)

He has received the Franklin Institute Ballantine medal, the Leibman award of the IEEE, and the Progress medal of the Photographic Society of America, mainly in connection with the CCD invention. Last month he received the Distinguished Service Award of the I.E.E.E. Electron Devices Society.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and of the I.E.E.E.

His professional activities included: Founding Editor IEEE Electron Device Letters; Chair IEEE Awards Board (1984), member of the Defense Department Advisory Group on Electron Devices (1971-1986), ...

He is the holder of 40 patents.

Dr. Smith retired in 1986 as head of the Bell Labs VLSI Department and has been sailing around the world on his 31 ft. cutter, Apogee. Because of the interest here in that experiment he may say something about this at the colloquium.