SIC 3675 Electronic Capacitors
SIC 3675
This category covers establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing electronic capacitors. Establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing electrical capacitors are classified in SIC 3629: Electrical Industrial Apparatus, Not Elsewhere Classified.
334414
Electronic Capacitor Manufacturing
In 2003 shipment values within the electronic capacitors industry were $1.99 billion, down from $1.34 billion in 2002 and $1.73 billion in 2000. In 2000 total shipment values were $2.79 billion, thus the 2003 total represents a 57 percent decrease over the four-year period. There were about 85 establishments in the industry in 2003, down from 128 in 1997. In recent years, about 60 percent of the industry's firms employed 20 or more workers.
Employment of production workers in the industry increased from 13,500 in 1991 to 21,200 by 1995 but dropped to 13,611 in 1997 and 12,979 in 2000. Following the decline in revenues, worker numbers continued to drop during the early 2000s; by 2003 employee totals had fallen below 11,000. The industry was relatively labor intensive, having more than 40 percent as much investment per production worker as that for the manufacturing sector as a whole in recent years. Annual hourly wages for production workers in the industry were about 20 percent lower than the average manufacturing wage in 2002. That year, production workers earned an average of about $12.53 per hour, up from $11.06 per hour in 1997.
The U.S. capacitor market was dominated by foreign-owned subsidiaries in the mid-2000s. For example, in 2005 Japanese firms owned two of the industry's leaders, the AVX Corporation and Murata Electronics North America Inc.
Based on quantities reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in Current Industrial Reports, the top two types of capacitors by product share in 2003 were those made from ceramic and tantalum. Along with paper and film capacitors, aluminum made up smaller portions of the market, having given up market share to ceramic and tantalum chips during the 1980s and 1990s. During the 1990s tantalum capacitors gained popularity, especially among cell phone manufacturers; however, a shortage of tantalum materials in 2000 caused a shift toward designs more heavily reliant on ceramic-based capacitors. By the mid-2000s, tantalum was once again becoming a more popular design choice.
Among the largest of the several trade organizations serving the industry were the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) of Arlington, Virginia and the American Electronics Association (AEA) of Santa Clara, California. EIA was founded in 1924 and had 1,300 members companies in the mid-2000s. The group produced a number of publications and was involved in the development of industry standards. AEA was founded in 1943 and had 3,000 member companies. In addition to organizing industry conferences and events, AEA published a variety of publications and special reports about the industry.
In his Basic Electricity and Electronics, Delton T. Horn defined capacitors and capacitance: "A capacitor is a device capable of storing charge in a circuit, and typically consists of two metal plates separated by an insulator, called a dielectric. Capacitance is directly proportional to the area of the plates and the dielectric constant of the insulator and is inversely proportional to the distance between the plates." Capacitors can store charges from voltage sources for a wide range of time, to be released as needed. The classification of capacitor types by material such as paper, ceramic, or tantalum refers to the insulating dielectric. Electronic capacitors are part of a class of electronic components called passive components. They differ from active components, such as vacuum tubes and transistors, in that they can neither distinguish voltage polarity nor amplify a signal.
The first capacitor was the Leyden jar, invented independently in the mid-1740s by both Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek. A glass jar acted as the insulating material. M. Bauer developed the mica capacitor in Germany in 1874. Mica had advantages over glass because it could better withstand shocks and could produce the same capacitance as a smaller capacitor. D.G. Fitzgerald was the first to patent the paper capacitor, in 1876; later, L. Lombardi produced the first ceramic capacitor, in Italy. Ceramic capacitors can withstand extreme temperatures and are highly stable. The tubular glass capacitor was produced in 1904 by I. Moscicki in the United Kingdom. It was this capacitor that Guglielmo Marconi used in his early experiments with radio communication.
World War I provided an important catalyst for technical change in...
To continue reading
Request your trial