PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Julius Blank, a mechanical engineer who helped start a computer chip company in the 1950s that kick-started an industry, has died, his family said.
Blank's daughter-in-law Cynthia Small Blank said he died Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif., at age 86.
Blank was one of eight computer scientists who, with a $1.5 million investment, started Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. in 1957.
Blank, one of only two in the group with manufacturing experience, took on the task of creating the machinery to mass-produce the silicon computer chips that became the foundation of the electronics industry.
"In those days you couldn't go out and buy these things off the shelf," David C. Brock, coauthor of a 2010 history of Fairchild Semiconductor, told The New York Times. "They had to build everything, starting with the equipment for growing silicon crystals."
Blank and fellow engineer Eugene Kleiner scrounged parts and improvised equipment to create the first assembly line to create silicon computer chips.
Blank, born in Manhattan in 1925, served in the Army in World War II then graduated from City College with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1950.
Blank, whose wife Ethel died in 2008, is survived by two sons, Jeffrey and David, and two grandsons.
