in 1951 bell labs held their first transistor symposium and began to licensing transistor technology for a $25.000 fee. At this time, Centralab became interested in making transistors and acquired a license.

By 1958 i had decided to leave (Centralab) and began looking for another job. I talked with several companies and found that IBM had committed to technology similar to the thick-film work i had done at Centralab. i felt they had made a basic mistake by choosing a substrate that was much too small. Motorola was quite interested and thought i could work part-time on my ideas about miniaturization. Texas Instruments was more enthusiastic than the others and offered me a job working in miniaturization full-time ...

In the early 1950s, the Englishman Geoff Dummer of the Royal Radar Establishment suggested that all electronics could be made as a single block. He mentioned the use of a amplifyer layers, resistive layers and things of that sort ... But Dummer gave no proposal for how to do it ...

In 1956, Dummer gave a small contract to a British manufacturer to build such a device. They were completely unsuccessful, partly because they worked with the grown-junction technology ... and tried to connect the various layers. While his device failed, Dummer was on target in general. (jack s. kilby, 2000)

not just about geoff dummer but technology transfer and the british microelectronic industry in generell, a text from john wilson on confused signals, from 1950-75.