flipper wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:17:41 +0100, Baron
wrote:

flipper Inscribed thus:

Don't worry. He does that all the time and is quite reliably wrong.

One of, if not, the first commercial ICs was the Fairchild-Micrologic
type "F" (flip-flop) stuffed to the brim with a mind boggling 4
transistors.

http://www.computerhistory.org/colle...sion/102696650

They also had the type "G" nor gate.

T.I. made similar 'chips', and there is debate as to whether theirs or
Micrologic's was 'first', but their early production was entirely
consumed by NASA and the military so many consider that not
'commercially available'.
I vaguely remember that I was playing about with "Ferranti" packaged
circuits, circa late 60's that had four transistors. I also seem to
recall that the colour of the plastic indicated what type of circuit
was in the package. Oh those fun days... :-)

All this talk about the first ICs reminded me of the first "IC
Computers:" the Apollo computer systems.

Those working on a DIY lunar mission can download a simulator of the
guidance computer from this site.

http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ForDummies.html

Notice the computer specs: 85,000 CPU instructions per second. Yee-ha,
we're cooking with gas now!

The story of how the 'verb-noun' interface came about is both funny
and scary. Apparently no one had spec 'd the man machine interface so
when a demo was needed something was thrown together and it stuck.

A power point presentation showing the guts of it.

http://klabs.org/mapld04/presentatio...007_hall_s.ppt

The ICs were dual nor gates.


The space race was an exciting time. It's hard to imagine how they
did it with the technology at hand. Imagine building a Mercury, Gemini
or Apollo capsule with modern electronics. I wonder how much weight and
power could be saved.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired