Hi David, Since I left the note in 2020, two good friends who worked direclty for your grandfather in the glass lab have passed away. One was Les Longworth–a very talented painter and the most insance cartoonist ever– whose subjects were mostly coworkers and Ed Mann. Ed looked forward to every new cartoon and laughed as hard as anyone. The other was Dick Ryan, who died this year. He was an inventor and bicycle manufacturer– see “Ryan Recumbents.” Both men worked for and were friends with Ed. He wasn’t a formal boss; he called everyone by their first names and everyone called him Ed. The precise (we are talking microns) scales and reticles created in the glass lab were used by Army Map Service, NASA, in satelites and in the first lunar lander among others. Glass lab employees had security clearance. Ed was a little bit of a nerd but was occasionally behind a prank. One that I remember: a coworker was continually boasting about his car’s gas mileage. Ed had someone secretly add a pint of gas daily to his fuel tank. The man’s bragging stopped when he hit an impossible 50 miles to the gallon. Somehow 60 years ago this was hilarious. I wish I could have been more help. I’m pretty sure that your grandfather was usually the smartest man in the room.

Hey! My name is David w Mann. I am the great grandson of the founder of the David w Mann company. Edward Mann was my grandfather. I appreciate all these post especially yours. I enjoy learning more about my family. I was 17 when Ed passed in 2003 and didn’t get a chance to ask him about what I’m learning here. Thanks again
-Dave Mann

One of my colleagues at GCA, Steve Johnson, had a Zeiss 10-78-37 5x stepper lens on his desk as a souvenir in the early 90s at Plessey Semiconductors in Manchester. We both worked for GCA, Steve was tech support and I was a FSE. When General Signal pulled the plug on European operations, Steve went to Plessey, I went to Ateq.

The last 4600L was installed at Plessey in the UK. I worked on the 6696 Photorepeatot that also had the optional Smart Set metrology tool. This used the SXS (site by site) alignment system to analyse the position of fresnel zones printed on the mask. The 6696 was basically a 6300B wafer stepper without the AWH (automatic wafer handler) and AWA (automatic wafer alignment) modules. It did have, however, the amazing RMS (reticle management system) which was designed to remove one mask simultaneously as loading a new mask on the platen and do an automatic mask alignment using small square fiducials. It was amazing to see it operate. Both 6696 and 4600L (and older 3696 and 3600F) were decommissioned when the Ateq Core 2000 was upgraded to 20x and included two pass options which could print a complete 5” mask in 30 minutes rendering all the old GCA tools obsolete. I was trained at Ateq in Beaverton Oregon in 1988 and was the first Core engineer in Europe. I continued to work on Core and Alta tools until my retirement (next week) in April 2024

I was employed at GCA Int. for the track systems for 7 years.
I remember your name but not how we were connected.
I wonder if it was not Frank Gusdorf.

Simon Buren

Brandon, I worked at GCA 1979-1982 assembling and testing the 4800 DSW. I was working for Red Pittman when I started. While I was there I designed a bunch of setup tools/fixtures. Someone I met maybe 10 years ago told me that all my laser alignment, microscope adjustment tools… etc were actually put in the field service kit, and still in use when he told me about this… -Alan

Hi Bernie
I left GCA in 1984 to join you and Al at Leitz-IMS.
All these years later I am still doing software. We had a lot of fun back then.
-Sharon