In 1965, he worked in Malibu, California with Hughes Research Laboratories, which specializes in aerospace and defense operations.
At the Hughes Research Laboratories in the late 1960s, Bower strove to find the ideal element to integrate in all circuits.
In the late 1950s, McCaldin and Hornoi devised of the silicon planar process and Kilby and Noyce established an Integrated circuit (IC) that could serve as a basic platform for Lilienfeld's design.
However, without the self-aligned gate, the MOSFET lacked a proper source to improve the accuracy of the entire fabrication process.
Bower's invention underwent much controversy when Kerwin, Klein, and Sarace argued that they were the actual inventors of the self-aligned gate transistors.
It was also determined in a number of court cases that the vast majority of self-aligned gate FETs were made using ion implantation rather than diffusion to introduce the dopants into the source-drain regions.
Aside from his large contributions in the advancement of MOSFET, Bower has published over 80 journals and articles, patented over 28 inventions, and authored chapters in 3 different books.
Most notably was his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1997 for his invention of the self-aligned gate ion implanted MOSFET.