Signetics

Today I checked out a Gold's Gym in Orem, Utah. The gym is housed in a former Fred Meyer store, and touts itself as the largest Gold's Gym in the United States. By way of comparison, I believe that Reggie Jackson's gym in Seaside, California has about 8 or 9 treadmills. This gym may have 40 or more - - the facility is huge. It sits on some property of some significance to many who attended BYU and who have lived in the Provo - Orem area. I became aware of the property when I learned of Signetics. "Signetics, once a major player in semiconductor manufacturing, made a variety of devices which included integrated circuits, bipolar and MOS, the Dolby circuit, logic, memory and analog circuits and Motorola clone CPUs, some of which were included in the first Atari video games. Signetics was started in 1960 or 1961 by the engineer Dave Allison. Its main business was semiconductor manufacturing. Most of the manufacturing was in Sunnyvale California, though there were factories in Orem, Utah and New Mexico also . . . The company eventually became a part of Philips, during which time it reached its manufacturing height at around 1980. From then on the Signetics brand slowly disintegrated in the face of competition from AMD and Intel. The company is now extinct except for its name." (Signetics, Wikipedia) When I was working on my Computer Science degree at BYU many BYU students were getting excellent jobs at the Orem plant, including internships. The students would have certainly included electrical engineering students and computer science students, and perhaps others as well. Signetics gave a great boost to students who were just starting their careers and families. The Orem Signetics plant was eventually closed, and the facility sat unused for years. A few years ago there was renewed interest in the property. Orem was faced with a choice between two interested parties - - if I recall correctly, each party needed some zoning accommodation from Orem city to execute their plans for the property. One party was a chip manufacturer that would update the plant and start up manufacturing again; the other party was Fred Meyer, which had plans to raze the old building and replace it with a large grocery - department store. I was a little surprised when Orem chose to facilitate the Fred Meyer plan. A few years later, the Fred Meyer building was shut down as its Kroger parent company came to own both the Fred Meyer and Smith's grocery stores, meaning that Kroger found itself with too many stores in the Provo - Orem area. And now, Orem has the largest Gold's Gym in the United States, if not the world. I wonder whether the role Signetics played in the economic development of Provo - Orem helped create the market for such a gym.