Cecil Green

Cofounder, Texas Instruments

Search every verified Cecil Green interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Cecil Green, cofounder of Texas Instruments, discussed his early career and the origins of Geophysical Service, Inc. (GSI) in recorded interviews. He recounted that he became interested in geophysics after experiencing the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as a child. After graduating from MIT with an electrical engineering degree, he worked at General Electric before joining GSI. Green described how he, along with Eugene McDermott, Erick Johnson, and Dave Peacock, acquired GSI in partnership in 1941, shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He noted that the onset of World War II led the company to shift from geophysical services to producing magnetic aerial detectors, an invention developed by Victor Vacquier. In his remarks, Green reflected on his experiences traveling through the Middle East and Far East, during which GSI conducted its first marine acquisition survey. He also recalled visiting an Aramco well in northern Saudi Arabia that was drilling on a GSI anomaly. Green spoke positively about the people in petroleum exploration, stating that he would do the same thing again and that the quality of people in the industry was notable. He also mentioned that after the war, concerns about the stability of military contracts led GSI to seek civilian applications, which contributed to the company's later involvement with transistors, an invention by Bell Laboratories.