74xx orgin

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Tue May 15 17:38:46 2001

On May 15, 13:45, Hans Franke wrote:
> When where the first 74xx ICs released / designed ?
> Especialy when where complex chips like 744x, 748x or
> 74181 first mentioned/available ?
>
> This may be a stuipd question, but I couldn't find any
> information ... so all I have is my personal guess (~1970)
> and the oldesd TTL book Philip Belben could find (1972).

According to Webopaedia and at least one history website, Texas released
the first SSI TTL chips in 1965 and LSTTL in 1970. It certainly must have
been before 1970 becasue DEC were using 7440's, 7481's ($9 each according
to the spares list), and 74Hxx in quantity for the PDP-11/20 by 1970. The
PDP-8/I used TTL in 1968. And the Smithsonian site quotes

     "NMAH catalog number 1987.0487.128, 314, 315
      1964 - TI-G00206,294, 343 documentation
      News release: TI Announces new Series Of Semiconductor
      Integrated Circuits Combining High Speed And Low Power
      Advantages -- Solid Circuit Series 54"

Nat Semi's website history pages quote 1970 as the year they made money
from TTL 74xx series.

But the earliest I can find in my Texas data books for MSI is 1972 for the
72181, same as Philip. The data sheets for the SSI are obviously older
than that.

Curiously, although there's lots of information on TI's own company
information pages in the "Innovations" section, they don't mention TTL.
 The only relevant items are a press release on June 23, 1964 about
granting of patents including "Features of integrated 'AND gates' and
related devices" and mentioning that "Current Texas Instruments SOLID
CIRCUIT? semiconductor networks contain up to 69 component equivalents
formed within a single bar of ultra pure silicon material". That's not
54/74 series TTL, though, it's 51-series. The other is a reference to
"1972: first ABACUS-II wire bonder, enabling high-volume IC production."
 There's some information on that at

    http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/history/abacus.shtml

which I found very interesting as I used a manual wire bonder on a visit to
Ferranti around 1972.


-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York
Received on Tue May 15 2001 - 17:38:46 BST

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