On Jun 5, 5:58�am, Misters Davis, McKenzie, and Crowley all wrote
about integrated circuits.

"K6LHA" Len Anderson wrote...
Almost ALL developments in electronics began as industry projects, eve
n
the IC. There is some controversy in the industry whether Intel or TI
made the "first IC." Intel's first IC was for an Asian customer to use
in a four-function calculator.

Ahem...the original subject was started in regards to WWII-era
"surplus" electronic hardware. Semiconductors - as we know them today
- don't quite qualify since Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley did their
transistor thing in 1947 at Bell Labs. :-)

As to the very first of the "scientific handheld calculators," a good
part of that story is written up in "Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and
Packard created the world's greatest company" by Michael Malone. In
itself, that book is representative of the entire electronics industry
from 1939 onwards (HP was formed in 1939) and the (usually) monthly
magazine put out free by HP, "Hewlett Packard Journal" shows that in
detail. ALL the issues of the HP Journal are on-line and are free
downloads.

As one of the early owners of an HP-35, I can add that there was no
ONE IC that was critical in it. Each one had a set of ICs that did
everything, contracted for from two vendors. A fault of HP somewhere
down the design line was not specifying things correctly and chips
from one IC vendor would not work with those from another vendor. One
of mine failed and I found out that story the hard way. HP just did
not expect nearly the onslaught of orders for the '35 (described in
Malone's book) and they had to set up for multiple shifts to handle
them and to revise their marketing practices. Eventually HP would
establish a division in Corvallis, OR, just for calculators and
special ICs for those and other HP divisions.

The first desktop calculator was the HP 9100 introduced in 1968. It
had NO ICs in it, not even RAM or ROM. Details of its design are in
the HP Journal of September 1968. It was also the first time HP
employed a "full-time" consultant named Tom Osborne who demonstrated a
working model he had built in his apartment. He used CORDIC
algorithms which HP long-timer David Cochrane crammed into the 9100's
ROM-equivalent. Both were involved in the later "box of numbers"
called the HP-35.

My HP-35 still works but the NiCad pack always gave trouble in
recharging (three of them did) and I got a programmable HP-25, gave
that to my Tech at Teledyne so that I could get an HP-67 which had
program storage via magnetic card. Long time after the little card
reader jammed and I got the CMOS HP-32S II which lasted ten years on
one battery set, now on its 2nd set. I bought an anniversary model,
the HP-35S as a memento and am waiting for the '32 to fail before
using that. :-)

However... With today's VLSI circuits... You do need an "Infrastructure"
to "Tinker" and short of folks like Mr. Gates and partners... Not many
people have that kind of resource on their own.

Slight correction. I'm playing with Microchip's PIC one-package
micros right now, using their free program editor-compiler. Got the
development hardware package because IC lead length spacings got too
small with modst SMDs. For many years AADE and Neil Heckt have been
making and selling their one-chip frequency counters up in the Puget
Sound area and many hams have installed those in older receivers and
transceivers. Neil has a great little workshop instrument in his L/C
meter also using a PIC chip.

As to "surplus," I can say I've operated a lot of that while in the US
Army 1952-1960 since so much was manufactured before or during
WWII...some of it by Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Co. for big hulking 1 KW HF
transmitters (BC-339, BC-340). In another area, some of the
contracted-for communuications electronics designed after WWII showed
a different design scheme of systems, circuitry, even physical
mounting than the pre-WWII thinking. There has been a constant
evoltion of design, use, application of 'radio' for the last seven
decades.

73, Len K6LHA