Designing Analog MOS Circuits at Berkeley in the Mid-70s

One often reads of cases in which the confluence of several factors, key among them the presence of a core of driven individuals, attracts other motivated people and leads to a happy situation characterized by enthusiasm and creativity, where "sparks fly". Examples can be found in many fields, from physics (e.g., University of Gottingen, Germany, in the 1920s) to music (e.g., Louisville Orchestra, 1950s). In engineering, one of the best examples of this can be found in the Integrated Circuits Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early-to-mid-70s and beyond.