[sdiy] Some more electronics history

[Tim Parkhurst]

A couple of links for those interested in the birth of the IC

An interesting site with info on Jack Kilby, and lots of links to other IC
historical info. Kilby basically came up with the idea while at TI, and
Robert Noyce came up with the idea independently and eventually launched the
company that would form the heart of the Silicon Valley.
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/kilby.htm


An Amazon listing of "The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and
Launched a Revolution". This link also shows some other related books that
look interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375758283/thegreatideafind/102-95229
90-4815324

I've read "The Chip" and it is a really fascinating book. It seems that the
advent of the transistor enabled designers to create devices far too complex
to implement with tubes. The biggest problem was that these devices soon
became too complex for humans to reliably manufacture. You would have so
many solder connections that the thing would be impossible to build,
troubleshoot and run for any length of time. The "numbers barrier" problem
was only solved by the creation of the integrated circuit. Remember that
even a "simple" chip like the early CPUs can contain several thousand
transistors. How would you like to try and solder together something like
that out of discretes?

>From my own personal memory, I recall being extremely impressed in 1979 when
a friend of mine said he was working on a project for school with not one,
but two 8MHz CPUs. I remember thinking that we might finally have the power
to create a programmable, patchable studio synth. Sigh, fond memories. :-)


Tim Servo
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

***************************************************************


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ChristianH [mailto:chris at scp.de]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 3:47 AM
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: [sdiy] Some more electronics history
> 
> Hi,
> 
> all this historical talk about the 3900 and its first use in synths made
> me wonder - do any members of the O.F.F. (aka Old Fart Fraction :-)
> remember introduction years for some key technologies, like operational
> amplifiers, OTAs, 4000 CMOS logic, or - gulp - BBDs?
> When did e.g. the state variable circuit pop up for the first time? Or
> something simple as LED technology, and there's probably some more that
> we take for granted now, but that simply hasn't been around only a few
> decades ago...
> 
> Do those inventions date back to the 60s, or did it all happen in the
> early 70s?
> 
> Christian



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