[sdiy] monoliths and how we got to 2001

[The Old Crow]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Goddard, Duncan wrote:

> first "chip" I saw was in a hifi book called "the a to z of hifi sound
> reproduction" which was published in 1958. at the time of going to
> ...
> the size of a cigarrette packet and described in the caption as "the
> world's first solid state integrated circuit audio amplifier". I could
> never understand why it was almost twenty years before such devices
> were in common use for this purpose- did the tube manufacturers have
> big sicilian friends or something?

  Smells like a patent issue: 17 years later the patent expired, shortly
afterward entered the age of solid-state amplifiers.

Crow

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