By Marlin Ristenbatt, Life Member
Marlin Ristenbatt, a Pennsylvania Dutch descendant, took a vocational option in high school due to no prospects for college (graduating in 1946). He unexpectedly got a chance to go to college (due to the G.I. Bill). Highly motivated at Penn State, he graduated second in a class of 101 electrical engineers in 1952 and was given a two-year fellowship for a master’s degree. In year 1, he took Robert L. Riddle’s first transistor course at Penn State. For year 2, Riddle returned to his Ph.D. campus (the University of Iowa) to complete the requirements for his Ph.D.
The Penn State Electrical Engineering Department asked me to teach Riddle’s transistor course during his absent year, which I did. When Riddle returned in 1954, he had a contract with Prentice Hall in his pocket for a basic book on transistors at the technical institute level (no calculus). To that point, all books had been of the “expert” type, usually with each chapter written by a separate expert. So this book would be (I think) the first pedagogical book on the topic, and it was titled Transistor Physics & Circuits.
Riddle proposed that we coauthor this book. At the time, I considered myself a successful graduate student, but not at the level of book authorship. But he talked me into it. We wrote a contract: he was to write one half, and I would write the other half. He would receive two-thirds of the royalties, and I would receive one-third. I started writing, and, probably because of the good reviews from early evaluators, I kept writing. Riddle never wrote a word. He was hugely influential in the content, making important decisions such as choosing the h-parameters, etc. But I basically wound up making the total outline decisions and arranging the transistor story from beginning to end. I never felt I was exploited, but I was surprised that I had to do the whole thing.
The result was sensational: we sold over 100,000 copies in two editions, and (to my complete surprise) the book is now regarded as a classic. You can still get a copy from major libraries, and engineers still trade it among themselves for US$10-15. I believe it’s one of the most successful textbook stories (but I never did research to prove that).
Riddle and I revised our contract for the second edition, splitting the royalties evenly (and reversing our name order), but by the third edition (1972), Riddle was completely out of it. Emphasis had shifted from discrete devices (transistors) to integrated circuits, and I’m sorry to report that my attempt failed. I called this edition Semiconductor Circuits, and it was a commercial failure. Prentice Hall had to eat the cost of producing that edition.
The reasons I think this is a story of interest to others: No one would have predicted such an important outcome from an engineer with my beginnings. The learners (about transistors) did not learn from the prestigious group, but from a team that was not using calculus. Even so, many teachers, while not permitted to officially use the book for that reason, asked students to use a library copy or buy one for themselves.
Editor’s Note: Marlin P. Ristenbatt was a research scientist emeritus in the University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science when he died in 2018 at age 89. He received his BSEE (1952) and MSEE (1954) from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D (1961) from the University of Michigan. He taught at the University of Michigan for 29 years until his retirement. He received the IEEE/USAB Citation of Honor in 1985 for “outstanding contributions towards achieving recognition of national professional activities” and another in 1997 “for his 20 years of work in the areas of career maintenance and development for U.S engineers, including his leadership in the project to create the document IEEE-USA Guidelines for Professional Employment.”
