On Thu, 28 Feb 2002 05:16:02 -0500 "Thomas C. Sefranek" writes: > Reginald Neale wrote: > > > > > > >I have parts marked with RCA, Signetics, Sprague, GE, and other > long > > >forgotten trade marks. Only another engineer could coo over such > mundane > > >collectibles. > > Some of those names are coming back! Fairchild is back. Signetics now looks like it's in Korea. Sprague became Allegro... > > I was fourteen when the transistor was invented. For the first few > > years it was a laboratory curiosity. We designed instrumentation > with > > vacuum tubes. Then we got our hands on the first commercially > > available transistors. My junkbox still has some CK722's and > 2N107s. The invention of the transistor beat me by a couple years. My high school electronics classes were all vacuum tube based. I remember my first transistor project, a small AM transmitter using the 2N107. It was from Popular Electronics magazine. > > Only last year I retired my bedside clock from the era of 4-banger > > calcs with tiny red bubble LED displays. I built it with a MOSTEK > > clock chip, one of the first LSI devices. > > My HP35 calculator with the little LEDs is still running. I got it in 1972... > > Anyone remember Poly-Paks? > We used to say Poly-Pak parts were "guaranteed not to unravel," but that was about it. I've just read a couple books on electronics during that period. The first is "Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age" (http://isbn.nu/0887309895) about the Xerox PARC. The second is "Spinoff" by Charlie Sporck (http://isbn.nu/0970748108) . While looking for the second, I ran across http://www.national.com/company/pressroom/history.html . Fun reading! Also, I have STARTED scanning broadcast equipment history at http://www.hallikainen.org/history/equipment/ . So far this week I've received about 20 pounds of stuff to scan from people in the broadcast industry. Harold FCC Rules Online at http://hallikainen.com/FccRules Lighting control for theatre and television at http://www.dovesystems.com ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.