Recalling the origins of DLTS

This paper recalls the events leading up to the author's 1973 discovery of Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS). It discusses the status of junction capacitance techniques in the late 1960s and points out why the typical capacitance instrumentation of that era would not have lead the author to the DLTS discovery. This discovery is discussed in the context of the novel NMR-inspired instrumentation used by the author to study fast capacitance transients of the ZnO center in GaP LEDs. Finally, the author makes some general comments about the innovation process. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.