Lee Loren Boysel (December 31, 1938 – April 25, 2021) was an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur. While at

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...

, he developed four-phase logic and built the first

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

with over 100

logic gate A logic gate is a device that performs a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an ideal logic gate, one that has, for ...

s, and designed the Fairchild 3800 / 3804 8-bit ALUs. Boysel designed the

Four-Phase Systems AL1 Four-Phase Systems, Inc., was a computer company, founded by Lee Boysel and others, which built one of the earliest computers using semiconductor main memory and metal–oxide–semiconductor, MOS large-scale integration, LSI logic. The company w ...

. He founded

Four-Phase Systems Four-Phase Systems, Inc., was a computer company, founded by Lee Boysel and others, which built one of the earliest computers using semiconductor main memory and MOS LSI logic. The company was incorporated in February 1969 and had moderate com ...

to commercialize the technology, and sold the company to

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

in 1981. He was a graduate of the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

Litigation

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

claimed to have patented the microprocessor and, in response, Boysel assembled a system in which a single 8-bit AL1 was used as part of a courtroom demonstration computer system, together with ROM, RAM and an input-output device.

References

American electronics engineers University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni 1938 births 2021 deaths {{US-electrical-engineer-stub