NARRATIVE HISTORY

Origin and Sponsorship:

In the early 1960's the Rome Air Development Center of the U.S. Air Force perceived a need to establish a forum for interchange of information on the physical processes which caused components to fail. To establish such an interchange they contracted with the Armour Research Foundation of the Illinois Institute of Technology to undertake the organization of such a meeting. Accordingly, the very first symposium was held on September 26-27, 1962 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois and was called the Symposium on the "Physics of Failure in Electronics". (Download Summmary booklet) While such mundane facts as the total attendance and cost are lost in the mists of time, the acceptance of the meeting was sufficient to have it continue the next year. In fact, symposia were held at IIT under joint RADC/ARF sponsorship (with RADC underwriting the cost of the meeting) in September '63, September '64, November '65 and November '66. In 1964 the format of the meeting was expanded to three days. In 1966 the site for the meeting was moved from IIT to Battelle-Columbus Labs in Columbus, Ohio.

In the year 1967 the Sixth Symposium saw major changes. The Reliability group and Electron Devices group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) agreed to jointly sponsor the Symposium. While it was (and is) expected that the Symposium will be financially self-sustaining, the IEEE, through the two sponsor groups, advances the "seed money" required for expenses incurred prior to the receipt of registration fees. At the conclusion of the Symposium, any deficit or surplus accrues to these groups. It was established early on that the management committee would attempt to come as near to a break even point as possible, with any surplus which might be generated being ploughed back into attendee services, insofar as prudent fiscal management would allow.

It was also in 1967 that the management structure of the Symposium was changed to have a single General Chairman, rather than the CoChairmen previously used, and Chairmen for each of the appropriate functions, such as Program, Arrangements, Publications, etc. While there has been some minor restructuring from time to time, the basic structure established in 1967 is in use today, except that in keeping with modern trends the offices are now desexed to be "Chairs".

In 1967 the Symposium was held in the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and in 1968 in Washington, D.C. There was no Symposium in the Fall of 1969 since it was decided to move to Spring for the regular time for the Symposium to meet. Accordingly, the Eighth Symposium was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in April of 1970. It remained in Las Vegas until 1978, at which time a policy of moving the site location around the country was implemented by having it in San Diego, California. Since then it has moved to other areas selected by the Board of Directors which provides service to our attendees through proximity to semiconductor manufacturing concentrations, while at the same time being a pleasant location for the meeting in the March/April time period.