Howard Layton, Inventor

In the early days of his company’s existence, IBM was Howard’s only customer, so when the purchasing chief at Poughkeepsie read the riot act and insisted that he go out and get more clients, his first success was with the Bell Telephone Labs.

At the facility in Holmdel, New Jersey, and at a second location in Reading, PA, he found fertile ground for innovation. It was at these laboratories that he was introduced to the difficulty of drying silicon wafers after rinsing, without re-contaminating them. Howard found a way to solve this problem and was subsequently granted his first US patent for his invention. Later, at the urgings of business advisors, Howard applied for patents whenever a significant new idea served to solve some manufacturing difficulty. So to-date Howard Layton has authored sixteen US patents and co-authored six others.