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X-Ray Exposure technology has long been said to be the technology of tomorrow. That was as true in the 1970s and 1980s as it is today. Still with the need for ever tighter geometries, interest took a big leap in the late eighties, promulgating the founding of Hampshire Instruments as the darling of ARPA. It made for great press with the equally great promises based on the Series 5000 pulsed, soft-X-ray system. A system that could get down to 0.5 micron on eight inch wafers! Or so the ads claimed. Dec ordered two. AT&T Bell Labs ordered several. IBM ordered a bunch. Sematech, Motorola and Cypress ordered one each. Soon, Hampshire was publishing great press about its new Series 3500 that could make 0.35 micron lines. It is questionable that even one unit was actually delivered. Before its demise, Hampshire had gone through more than $100 Million in funding, much of it from government contracts and New York State funding. Before it totally collapsed, the founder had leapt out to form Advanced X-Ray Systems. It, too went nowhere.
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