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Research dossier · History & Society

Applied Materials

American company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ621610
Source-derived summary

Applied Materials, Inc. is an American corporation that supplies equipment, services and software for the manufacture of semiconductor (integrated circuit) chips for electronics, flat panel displays for computers, smartphones, televisions, and solar products. The company also supplies equipment to produce coatings for flexible electronics, packaging and other applications. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and is the second largest supplier of semiconductor equipment in the world based on revenue behind Dutch company ASML.

History

Founded in 1967 by Michael A. McNeilly and others, Applied Materials went public in 1972 on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), a then-recently established stock exchange. In subsequent years, the company diversified, until James C. Morgan became CEO in 1976 and returned the company's focus to its core business of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. By 1978, sales increased by 17%.

In 1984, Applied Materials became the first U.S. semiconductor equipment manufacturer to open its own technology center in Japan, and the first semiconductor equipment company to operate a service center in China. In 1987, Applied introduced a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) machine called the Precision 5000, which differed from existing machines by incorporating diverse processes into a single machine that had multiple process chambers.

In 1992, the corporation settled a lawsuit with three former employees for an estimated $600,000. The suit complained that the employees had been driven out of the company after complaining about the courses Applied Scholastics had been hired to teach there.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Applied Materials” is american company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Applied, Materials and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1967, 1972, 1976, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1967. For this dossier, Applied, Materials and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q621610. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1972, 1976 and 1978.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Applied Materials”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Applied Materials primary sources, Applied Materials archive and Applied research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Applied Materials”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Applied Materials” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.