Who Founded Texas Instruments?

Patrick Haggerty led GSI's move into electronics and pushed Texas Instruments into transistors in the early 1950s, including licensing transistor technology from Western Electric and backing the 1954 Regency TR-1 transistor radio. He later served as TI's president and chairman and is credited with shaping its long-range planning culture.

Patrick E. Haggerty was born in 1914 in North Dakota.

Patrick Eugene Haggerty was born on March 17, 1914 and died on October 1, 1980. He served as president and chairman of Texas Instruments. Under him the company produced the first silicon transistor, the first commercial transistor radio and the first integrated circuit.

Cecil H. Green served as a director of Texas Instruments from its founding until his retirement from active corporate involvement in the 1970s and made essential contributions to the company's financial management and international expansion. His longest-lasting legacy, however, is philanthropic: the Green family donated more than 200 million dollars to educational and scientific institutions over their lifetimes, establishing the University of Texas at Dallas as a research university, a transformation that ultimately seeded the Dallas technology ecosystem from which TI continues to draw engineering talent. Green was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 for his services to education and died in 2003 at the age of 102.

Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cecil H. Green was born in 1900.

J. Erik Jonsson (1901-1995) was a co-founder of Texas Instruments. In 1930, he joined GSI, an oil exploration firm, and later orchestrated the buyout of the company alongside Cecil Green and Eugene McDermott on the eve of WWII. He pivoted the company toward defense electronics (submarine detection), eventually renaming it Texas Instruments in 1951. He served as President and Chairman, laying the groundwork for the company's massive entry into the semiconductor industry.

Education: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Montclair High School.

John Erik Jonsson was born on September 6, 1901 and died on August 31, 1995. He later became Mayor of Dallas, where he backed the building of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Eugene McDermott (1899-1973) co-founded Geophysical Service Inc. (the predecessor to Texas Instruments) in 1930. He pioneered the use of reflection seismology to discover oil reserves. During WWII, he guided the company's expansion into manufacturing highly sensitive electronic equipment for the US Navy, establishing the high-precision manufacturing culture that defined TI's later success in microchips.

McDermott was born on February 12, 1899 and died on August 23, 1973. His other inventions ranged from geochemical methods to antisubmarine warfare, often using sonar. Eugene McDermott was born in 1899.