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www.us-tech.com
Tech-Op-ed August, 2013
SOUNDING OFF
By Walter Salm Editor
The Rockets Are Gone I
t was summertime. As a young student at Union College, I stood every week- day morning on a corner across the street from Schenectady’s Ellis Hospital, just off the college campus, and was picked up by a school bus painted olive
drab. It carried a painted-on U.S. Army license, but there were no uniforms on board; everybody was a civilian employee, and the bus took me to the neatest summer job I ever had. I wore my General Electric photo ID tag with its checker- board border denoting “Secret” clearance, and watched an ongoing pinochle game that would only end as the bus pulled up to the gate that was flanked by two genuine V2 missiles. It was the summer of 1952, and I was working as an electronics technician and installer at the Malta Test Station (Hermes Project Rocket Test Site), run by General Electric for the U.S. Army. The tests were all static; the rocket was held in place while its engine
fired to test various engine designs and fuel combinations. What a dream come true for an avid science fiction fan! I actually got my hands on some rocket engines helping to dismantle them after testing. During a typical test, a wall full of Honeywell strip chart recorders would spew hundreds of feet of paper onto the blockhouse’s basement floor. But the rockets being tested were still very crude and I was dismayed, fully convinced that I would not live long enough to see men walk on the moon. How wrong I was. The site is very different today. Gone are the rockets; instead there is a
large state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing facility, part of an aggres- sive push by local officials to put Saratoga County on the map as a new iteration of Silicon Valley. The only reminder of the area’s mysterious past is one of the street names in the Luther Forest Technology Campus: Rocket Way. Saratoga itself has a wonderful and varied history. The Americans beat
the British there during a pivotal early Revolutionary War battle. During the Victorian era, Saratoga Springs became a popular place to “go for the waters” —the area’s natural mineral springs, which continue to be popular today. The city maintains a beautiful race track that opens for the month of August every year, when it’s too hot and humid for horseracing fans to remain in New York City. And Saratoga’s downtown has had a marvelous resurgence, becoming a very upbeat, artsy area with plenty of excellent shopping and dining. Just a short distance from the beautiful Victorian city, a new revolution is
under way as local promoters and companies strive to make the area into a new version of Silicon Valley in the Northeast. There was some precedent. About 100 miles south of Malta is a major IBM facility, and yes, they make semiconductors there, a lot of semiconductors. And Schenectady is still home to General Electric, although much of its manufacturing has moved elsewhere. Today, Saratoga County’s Luther Forest, a 1,400 acre technology cam-
pus, is home to GLOBALFOUNDRIES. The company’s $6.8 billion Fab 8 is producing integrated circuits for IBM, Qualcomm, AMD, STMicroelectronics and others. There is also a $2 billion Technology Development Center under construction which will be the nucleus for research and development. Fur- ther, plans are in the works to build another Fab on site which will have an estimated cost of $15.7 billion and would make Luther Forest home to an es- timated 6,700 high-tech workers. To add to the mix, companies like IBM, Intel, TSMC, Samsung, GLOB-
ALFOUNDRIES and New York State are investing $4.8 billion in nearby Al- bany, to build the world’s first wafer and equipment development consortium to transition the semiconductor industry from current 300mm wafer technol- ogy to the new 450mm technology. Now we are in a new era, called “reshoring”, with more and more com-
panies electing to build new facilities in the U.S. rather than take their pro- duction overseas. Areas of the country like the blossoming Tech Valley in New York’s Capitol District (Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Cohoes, Saratoga, Rens- selaer) have the wherewithal to make it happen sooner rather than later. The infrastructure is already in place, the area is brimming with colleges, univer- sities and think tanks, and there is a large pool of semi-skilled, trainable la- bor available. The nearby Adirondack Mountains offer a variety of recreational activi-
ties, bountiful lakes, fishing, hunting and hiking, and an abundance of win- ter sports. If your recreational tastes are more cosmopolitan, it’s only 2-1/2 hours away from New York City by car or train, or a little over an hour by plane. And wait until you see the tax incentives! r
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
By Jacob Fattal Publisher
Just Do It A
t one time, planning the September issue was a lot easier; there was just one major trade show for us, and it was in Rosemont. That show is gone, fragmented between McCormick Place and Schaumburg and in differ-
ent months. So we find ourselves concentrating on other shows: Nepcon South China in late August; and in October, productronica in Munich and SMTAI in Orlando, and U.S. Tech will be going to all three shows, and provide bonus dis- tribution. We’re still gathering material for our October issue, so if you have any-
thing going on at productronica or SMTAI, please send us your press releases along with hi-res photos in separate attached JPG or TIF files. Even if your company is not at these shows, send us your new products, since we can’t pub- lish your press releases if you don’t send them. All press releases should go to:
ustech@gim.net. Just a reminder: when your release appears in our print edition, it gets
a lot of extra exposure at trade shows; it also goes onto our web site, and into our digital edition which is available not only on computers, but also on iPhones, iPads, and Android programmed phones. We even have free apps for viewing our digital edition. U.S. Tech continues to provide the largest and most successful print for-
mat trade publication in the electronics manufacturing sector. Our success is your success, because we can’t do it unless you send us your PR. Check out our new 2014 Media Kit which is now online on our website. It contains our Edi- torial Schedule as well as our trade shows for next year. Then look at our Writers Guidelines, also in the Media Kit. It tells you what features we are looking for every month. This is all free publicity, and if you’re not taking ad- vantage of it, shame on you. If your claim is that you have no time, there are plenty of PR and advertising people out there who will be happy to help you out. Just do it — today. r
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