![MakeAugusta's tweet photo. The 555 Story
In electronics design, there are few components that are still regularly used in new products from for over fifty years. This integrated circuit quietly oscillates, pulses, and times its way into an impressive array of gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. Designed by Swiss engineer Hans Camenzind in the 1971 for the company Signetics, it has the distinction of being the most successful and best-selling Integrated Circuits in history. In this episode, weâre going to go through the story of the most prolific Integrated Circuit, the 555 timer.
A Split From Fairchild
In 1959, a designer named Bob Noyce created a groundbreaking invention at Fairchild Semiconductor. This invention was none other than the very first monolithic silicon integrated circuit chip. This chip was a significant technological advancement, as it allowed multiple electronic components to be combined onto a single piece of semiconductor material. This development paved the way for the modern computer age, revolutionizing the field of electronics and shaping the world as we know it today. Microchips were the future, everyone knew it. Youâll hear more about Bob Noyce in a future episode, as he and Gordon Moore started Intel in the late 60s.
Signetics was founded on Sept 12, 1961 by four Fairchild engineers, David Allison, David James, Lionel Kattner, and Mark Weissenstern.
A story of the early days of Signetics can be found in an interview with Lionel Kattner on YouTube. He claimed that Mark Weissenstern approached him regarding launching a business. It appears that David Allison and David James were already affiliated with this splinter group. These men were Fairchild engineers working on Integrated Circuit Development project. Fairchild was too preoccupied with the Transistor Market, so they had to watch their work, which had the potential to change the world, languish.
In June 1961, David James and Lionel Kattner met with Lehman Brothers about investment to start an Integrated Circuits company and Lehman Brothers invested $1M.
This is the equivalent to $10.3M today.
Then in September, they all left Fairchild Semiconductor and soon after moved into an eighteen thousand square foot building at 680 W Maude Ave in Sunnyvale, California.
Signetics
Fairchild Semiconductor and Bob Noyce are credited in inventing the Monolithic Integrated Circuit, but their primary business was transistors, and it seems that the military kept them very busy. Remember this was the late 50âs-early 60âs.
Soviet Russia put Sputnik in orbit just a few years earlier in 1957. The Communist Revolution in Cuba was in 1959.
Now remember, these engineers left what was likely a very well paid job, because they were spending so much effort to supporting the Department of Defense. While they were leaving Fairchild, the month before they founded Signetics, the Berlin Wall completed construction. I imagine from their perspective, at the time, it wouldnât seem like it was going to change anytime soon.
Signetics has the distinction of being the first company founded with the specific purpose of designing, manufacturing, and marketing Integrated Circuits and they were very good at it.
The name Signetics comes from 'SIGnal NETwork ElectronICS'. The plan was to make ASICs or Application Specific Integrated Circuits targeting specific customers, like the D O D. It was a solid plan and nobody was doing that yet.
After living at 680 W Maude Ave for a year, Corning Glass Works paid $2.25M for a 51% stake in Signetics. Just think: they started the business with $1 million less than 18 months later and grew it 4.5 times that value
David James, a co-founder and first president of the company, left the Signetics in 1965, and by then Corning owned 82% of it. Soon after, the president of Corning Glass Works was elected to be the new Chairman of the Board of Signetics. So, by the late 1960s, Signetics no longer had the same culture that it began with. It was essentially another division of the Corning company.
Hans Camenzind
Now, I have set the stage.
The year was 1968 when our hero enters the story. Hans Camenzind.
Hans Camenzind was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1934. He studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a prominent institution in Zurich, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He then moved to the United States in 1960 and received a Masters of Electronic Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston.
Afterwards, he started working for P.R. Mallory and Company in Burlington, Massachusetts in 1962. P.R. Mallory was a leading battery designer and manufacturing company. Iâm not surprised if youâve never heard of P.R. Mallory, because, while Hans was working for them, in 1964 they started rebranding to Duracell Battery. This is actually pretty neat, because in my collection I have some Mallory branded tubes and other components. They were essentially made by Duracell Battery and that is kind of neat.
When he was a student at Northeastern University, he would sometimes go study at M.I.T.âs library and read old journals. This time of his life very much informed his future career. I found a quote from him about his experiences in this library.
âI went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and underneath the circular white dome, on the 6th and 7th floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers). There was no index, no computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase locked loop [PLL]. I had never heard of it before. I looked at it and it was a very obscure concept; it was used to lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.â
While working at P.R. Mallory, he pushed for them to let him develop P L L devices, but they really werenât interested in it at all, as they were a battery and material manufacturer. This is what caused him to leave P.R. Mallory and move out west to Santa Clara, California to work with Signetics. At his heart he knew he wanted to design Analog Integrated Circuits and work with P L L concepts.
From 1968 to 1970, while working at Signetics, he was responsible for the NE565, NE566, and the NE567.
The NE565 was the first practical and marketable Phase-Lock-Loop IC Device and was used heavily in FM demodulation applications. The NE566 was a simple âfunction generatorâ. It was a popular Sine Wave and Square Wave generator. The NE567 was a Tone Decoder. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this trio of ICs was very popular and used for Touch Tone Phone Automatic Switchboards. Thatâs pretty cool.
At this time, I would like to ask you to let me take a moment and talk about Cyber City Circuits. Iâll make it quick. Cyber City Circuits was established in 2018 in Augusta, Ga. We offer an assortment of services, including low-to-medium volume PCB Assembly, PCB Design, Prototyping, QC Testing, and more. We also do custom designs, PCB badges, Custom Soldering Kits, etc. Please keep us in mind, next time you find you have PCB design and assembly needs. Now back to the show.
The Invention of The 555 Timer
In 1970 there was a nation-wide recession. Within the electronic components industry, the recession was credited to inflation, overcapacity, excess inventory, and increased competition from newer, more agile companies, like Intel. By this time Hans had become disenchanted by the direction Signetics was moving and in 1970, the corporate powers asked Hans to resign and he did. In 1970, Signetics would downsize their engineering departments by 50%.
Now, remember that a couple years before Hans started working at Signetics, Corning started buying up Signetics stock and the culture was changing. In interviews he reflects on this time as a relief and he wanted to take the time to write a book, but by the beginning of 1971 Signetics came back to Hans, trying to get him back onboard. He declined and instead demanded a one-year independent contract position. He had an idea for a timer device and started a new company called InterDesign to contract with Signetics.
If you think about it, Signetics didnât invent the 555 timer, InterDesign did. Signetics just marketed it.
So, when he designed the 555 timer, he did so as an independent contractor and his first independent design job was the 555 timer. In interviews he says the office he rented was a small place in between two Chinese Food Restaurants. I was able to find the address that the 555 Timer was designed in, at 165 S Murphy Ave Suite B in Sunnyvale, CA. It is still there today and it is an office for a real estate broker.
During this time, he went the University of Santa Clara in the evening to get his Masterâs in Business Administration and taught classes there in the mornings. He did his contract work in the afternoons. He said that Signetics loaned him all of the equipment he needed and paid him $1200 dollars a month. When adjusted for inflation, $1200 dollars in 1971, is equal to over $9,000 dollars a month today, not bad for part time work.
He said it took him the full year to finish the 555 timer, six months breadboarding and proving the design concepts and six months working on the Rubylith layout. He claims that while the first prototype was nearly finished, he had to make a few minor adjustments before sending it back to Signetics for manufacturing. It was all done by hand, there were no computers. His final design had twenty-three transistors, sixteen resistors, and two diodes.
The 555 timer was first introduced in the â1972 Signetics Full Line Catalogâ, where it had an 8-page datasheet entry. A link to this book can be found in the show notes.
The 555 almost didnât happen at all. The heads of the engineering departments at Signetics didnât want to add the timer to their catalog of parts, because they had multiple devices that would pair together to perform the same functions, so they felt like it would kind of shoot themselves in the foot. It was, the marketing manager, Art Fury, that championed the 555 timer on the behalf of Hans Camenzind. So, without Art Fury, we may not have the 555 timer today. A little unsung hero action there. Thatâs pretty cool.
In Hansâ book âDesigning Analog Chipsâ he talks about the release of the 555 timer. He writes âThe market reaction to the 555 timer was truly amazing. Art Fury made history by bringing out the circuit at an unprecedented low price, 75 cents. I had deliberately made the design flexible, but nine out of ten applications were in areas and ways I had never contemplated. For months I was inundated by phone calls from engineers who had a new idea for using the timer. To this day the 555 has been the best-selling IC every year, copied by numerous companies. Except for a CMOS version, the design has never been changed.â
A Post 555 Timer World
By the end of 1972, Signetics knew they had a hit on their hands. It had become the best-selling IC in history in its first year and it continues to be even today. They published special application guidebooks and really pushed marketing the device and in November of 1973 they went from needing to downsize their staff in 1970 to holding their Initial Public Offering or IPO, where they sold shares for $17 dollars a share. That is the same as $117 dollars today, which I would say makes for a very successful IPO.
It doesnât stop there, two years after that in 1975, Signetics was purchased out-right by Phillips, eventually becoming Phillips Semiconductor and then, many years later, spun back off as NXP Semiconductors. I canât find much in the line of âAnnual Reportsâ and Financial Reports from Signetics during this time, but my research makes it look like the 555 timer really helped pull Signetics back from the edge.
Hans continued his independent work as InterDesign, taking design and consulting contracts from different companies and in 1977 InterDesign was purchased by Ferranti. A year earlier Ferranti introduced the 16-Bit F100-L, which was the first microprocessor designed in Europe to enter the market.
InterDesign would go on to develop a product called âMonoChipâ which is a precursor to modern FPGAs and allowed for smaller organizations develop an Application Specific Integrated Circuit in a more cost-effective way.
After the sale of InterDesign he continued to teach and sell independent deisgn consulting work. Hans designed more than 150 ICs and held more than 20 patents.
Hans wrote three books, including âDesigning Analog Chipsâ in 2005 and âMuch Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electronâ in 2008.
Hans Camenzind passed away in his sleep in 2012 at his home in Los Altos, California. Hans Camenzindâs career has had an impact on the world, that very few have had. He is in the same tier as Gordon Moore, Jack Kilby, Bob Noyce, Jack Haenichen and more.
Thank you for your time.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_RiVejXUAAyuIZ.png)
![MakeAugusta's tweet photo. The 555 Story
In electronics design, there are few components that are still regularly used in new products from for over fifty years. This integrated circuit quietly oscillates, pulses, and times its way into an impressive array of gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. Designed by Swiss engineer Hans Camenzind in the 1971 for the company Signetics, it has the distinction of being the most successful and best-selling Integrated Circuits in history. In this episode, weâre going to go through the story of the most prolific Integrated Circuit, the 555 timer.
A Split From Fairchild
In 1959, a designer named Bob Noyce created a groundbreaking invention at Fairchild Semiconductor. This invention was none other than the very first monolithic silicon integrated circuit chip. This chip was a significant technological advancement, as it allowed multiple electronic components to be combined onto a single piece of semiconductor material. This development paved the way for the modern computer age, revolutionizing the field of electronics and shaping the world as we know it today. Microchips were the future, everyone knew it. Youâll hear more about Bob Noyce in a future episode, as he and Gordon Moore started Intel in the late 60s.
Signetics was founded on Sept 12, 1961 by four Fairchild engineers, David Allison, David James, Lionel Kattner, and Mark Weissenstern.
A story of the early days of Signetics can be found in an interview with Lionel Kattner on YouTube. He claimed that Mark Weissenstern approached him regarding launching a business. It appears that David Allison and David James were already affiliated with this splinter group. These men were Fairchild engineers working on Integrated Circuit Development project. Fairchild was too preoccupied with the Transistor Market, so they had to watch their work, which had the potential to change the world, languish.
In June 1961, David James and Lionel Kattner met with Lehman Brothers about investment to start an Integrated Circuits company and Lehman Brothers invested $1M.
This is the equivalent to $10.3M today.
Then in September, they all left Fairchild Semiconductor and soon after moved into an eighteen thousand square foot building at 680 W Maude Ave in Sunnyvale, California.
Signetics
Fairchild Semiconductor and Bob Noyce are credited in inventing the Monolithic Integrated Circuit, but their primary business was transistors, and it seems that the military kept them very busy. Remember this was the late 50âs-early 60âs.
Soviet Russia put Sputnik in orbit just a few years earlier in 1957. The Communist Revolution in Cuba was in 1959.
Now remember, these engineers left what was likely a very well paid job, because they were spending so much effort to supporting the Department of Defense. While they were leaving Fairchild, the month before they founded Signetics, the Berlin Wall completed construction. I imagine from their perspective, at the time, it wouldnât seem like it was going to change anytime soon.
Signetics has the distinction of being the first company founded with the specific purpose of designing, manufacturing, and marketing Integrated Circuits and they were very good at it.
The name Signetics comes from 'SIGnal NETwork ElectronICS'. The plan was to make ASICs or Application Specific Integrated Circuits targeting specific customers, like the D O D. It was a solid plan and nobody was doing that yet.
After living at 680 W Maude Ave for a year, Corning Glass Works paid $2.25M for a 51% stake in Signetics. Just think: they started the business with $1 million less than 18 months later and grew it 4.5 times that value
David James, a co-founder and first president of the company, left the Signetics in 1965, and by then Corning owned 82% of it. Soon after, the president of Corning Glass Works was elected to be the new Chairman of the Board of Signetics. So, by the late 1960s, Signetics no longer had the same culture that it began with. It was essentially another division of the Corning company.
Hans Camenzind
Now, I have set the stage.
The year was 1968 when our hero enters the story. Hans Camenzind.
Hans Camenzind was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1934. He studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a prominent institution in Zurich, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He then moved to the United States in 1960 and received a Masters of Electronic Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston.
Afterwards, he started working for P.R. Mallory and Company in Burlington, Massachusetts in 1962. P.R. Mallory was a leading battery designer and manufacturing company. Iâm not surprised if youâve never heard of P.R. Mallory, because, while Hans was working for them, in 1964 they started rebranding to Duracell Battery. This is actually pretty neat, because in my collection I have some Mallory branded tubes and other components. They were essentially made by Duracell Battery and that is kind of neat.
When he was a student at Northeastern University, he would sometimes go study at M.I.T.âs library and read old journals. This time of his life very much informed his future career. I found a quote from him about his experiences in this library.
âI went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and underneath the circular white dome, on the 6th and 7th floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers). There was no index, no computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase locked loop [PLL]. I had never heard of it before. I looked at it and it was a very obscure concept; it was used to lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.â
While working at P.R. Mallory, he pushed for them to let him develop P L L devices, but they really werenât interested in it at all, as they were a battery and material manufacturer. This is what caused him to leave P.R. Mallory and move out west to Santa Clara, California to work with Signetics. At his heart he knew he wanted to design Analog Integrated Circuits and work with P L L concepts.
From 1968 to 1970, while working at Signetics, he was responsible for the NE565, NE566, and the NE567.
The NE565 was the first practical and marketable Phase-Lock-Loop IC Device and was used heavily in FM demodulation applications. The NE566 was a simple âfunction generatorâ. It was a popular Sine Wave and Square Wave generator. The NE567 was a Tone Decoder. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this trio of ICs was very popular and used for Touch Tone Phone Automatic Switchboards. Thatâs pretty cool.
At this time, I would like to ask you to let me take a moment and talk about Cyber City Circuits. Iâll make it quick. Cyber City Circuits was established in 2018 in Augusta, Ga. We offer an assortment of services, including low-to-medium volume PCB Assembly, PCB Design, Prototyping, QC Testing, and more. We also do custom designs, PCB badges, Custom Soldering Kits, etc. Please keep us in mind, next time you find you have PCB design and assembly needs. Now back to the show.
The Invention of The 555 Timer
In 1970 there was a nation-wide recession. Within the electronic components industry, the recession was credited to inflation, overcapacity, excess inventory, and increased competition from newer, more agile companies, like Intel. By this time Hans had become disenchanted by the direction Signetics was moving and in 1970, the corporate powers asked Hans to resign and he did. In 1970, Signetics would downsize their engineering departments by 50%.
Now, remember that a couple years before Hans started working at Signetics, Corning started buying up Signetics stock and the culture was changing. In interviews he reflects on this time as a relief and he wanted to take the time to write a book, but by the beginning of 1971 Signetics came back to Hans, trying to get him back onboard. He declined and instead demanded a one-year independent contract position. He had an idea for a timer device and started a new company called InterDesign to contract with Signetics.
If you think about it, Signetics didnât invent the 555 timer, InterDesign did. Signetics just marketed it.
So, when he designed the 555 timer, he did so as an independent contractor and his first independent design job was the 555 timer. In interviews he says the office he rented was a small place in between two Chinese Food Restaurants. I was able to find the address that the 555 Timer was designed in, at 165 S Murphy Ave Suite B in Sunnyvale, CA. It is still there today and it is an office for a real estate broker.
During this time, he went the University of Santa Clara in the evening to get his Masterâs in Business Administration and taught classes there in the mornings. He did his contract work in the afternoons. He said that Signetics loaned him all of the equipment he needed and paid him $1200 dollars a month. When adjusted for inflation, $1200 dollars in 1971, is equal to over $9,000 dollars a month today, not bad for part time work.
He said it took him the full year to finish the 555 timer, six months breadboarding and proving the design concepts and six months working on the Rubylith layout. He claims that while the first prototype was nearly finished, he had to make a few minor adjustments before sending it back to Signetics for manufacturing. It was all done by hand, there were no computers. His final design had twenty-three transistors, sixteen resistors, and two diodes.
The 555 timer was first introduced in the â1972 Signetics Full Line Catalogâ, where it had an 8-page datasheet entry. A link to this book can be found in the show notes.
The 555 almost didnât happen at all. The heads of the engineering departments at Signetics didnât want to add the timer to their catalog of parts, because they had multiple devices that would pair together to perform the same functions, so they felt like it would kind of shoot themselves in the foot. It was, the marketing manager, Art Fury, that championed the 555 timer on the behalf of Hans Camenzind. So, without Art Fury, we may not have the 555 timer today. A little unsung hero action there. Thatâs pretty cool.
In Hansâ book âDesigning Analog Chipsâ he talks about the release of the 555 timer. He writes âThe market reaction to the 555 timer was truly amazing. Art Fury made history by bringing out the circuit at an unprecedented low price, 75 cents. I had deliberately made the design flexible, but nine out of ten applications were in areas and ways I had never contemplated. For months I was inundated by phone calls from engineers who had a new idea for using the timer. To this day the 555 has been the best-selling IC every year, copied by numerous companies. Except for a CMOS version, the design has never been changed.â
A Post 555 Timer World
By the end of 1972, Signetics knew they had a hit on their hands. It had become the best-selling IC in history in its first year and it continues to be even today. They published special application guidebooks and really pushed marketing the device and in November of 1973 they went from needing to downsize their staff in 1970 to holding their Initial Public Offering or IPO, where they sold shares for $17 dollars a share. That is the same as $117 dollars today, which I would say makes for a very successful IPO.
It doesnât stop there, two years after that in 1975, Signetics was purchased out-right by Phillips, eventually becoming Phillips Semiconductor and then, many years later, spun back off as NXP Semiconductors. I canât find much in the line of âAnnual Reportsâ and Financial Reports from Signetics during this time, but my research makes it look like the 555 timer really helped pull Signetics back from the edge.
Hans continued his independent work as InterDesign, taking design and consulting contracts from different companies and in 1977 InterDesign was purchased by Ferranti. A year earlier Ferranti introduced the 16-Bit F100-L, which was the first microprocessor designed in Europe to enter the market.
InterDesign would go on to develop a product called âMonoChipâ which is a precursor to modern FPGAs and allowed for smaller organizations develop an Application Specific Integrated Circuit in a more cost-effective way.
After the sale of InterDesign he continued to teach and sell independent deisgn consulting work. Hans designed more than 150 ICs and held more than 20 patents.
Hans wrote three books, including âDesigning Analog Chipsâ in 2005 and âMuch Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electronâ in 2008.
Hans Camenzind passed away in his sleep in 2012 at his home in Los Altos, California. Hans Camenzindâs career has had an impact on the world, that very few have had. He is in the same tier as Gordon Moore, Jack Kilby, Bob Noyce, Jack Haenichen and more.
Thank you for your time.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_RiTKuWUAA8yeM.png)
![MakeAugusta's tweet photo. The 555 Story
In electronics design, there are few components that are still regularly used in new products from for over fifty years. This integrated circuit quietly oscillates, pulses, and times its way into an impressive array of gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. Designed by Swiss engineer Hans Camenzind in the 1971 for the company Signetics, it has the distinction of being the most successful and best-selling Integrated Circuits in history. In this episode, weâre going to go through the story of the most prolific Integrated Circuit, the 555 timer.
A Split From Fairchild
In 1959, a designer named Bob Noyce created a groundbreaking invention at Fairchild Semiconductor. This invention was none other than the very first monolithic silicon integrated circuit chip. This chip was a significant technological advancement, as it allowed multiple electronic components to be combined onto a single piece of semiconductor material. This development paved the way for the modern computer age, revolutionizing the field of electronics and shaping the world as we know it today. Microchips were the future, everyone knew it. Youâll hear more about Bob Noyce in a future episode, as he and Gordon Moore started Intel in the late 60s.
Signetics was founded on Sept 12, 1961 by four Fairchild engineers, David Allison, David James, Lionel Kattner, and Mark Weissenstern.
A story of the early days of Signetics can be found in an interview with Lionel Kattner on YouTube. He claimed that Mark Weissenstern approached him regarding launching a business. It appears that David Allison and David James were already affiliated with this splinter group. These men were Fairchild engineers working on Integrated Circuit Development project. Fairchild was too preoccupied with the Transistor Market, so they had to watch their work, which had the potential to change the world, languish.
In June 1961, David James and Lionel Kattner met with Lehman Brothers about investment to start an Integrated Circuits company and Lehman Brothers invested $1M.
This is the equivalent to $10.3M today.
Then in September, they all left Fairchild Semiconductor and soon after moved into an eighteen thousand square foot building at 680 W Maude Ave in Sunnyvale, California.
Signetics
Fairchild Semiconductor and Bob Noyce are credited in inventing the Monolithic Integrated Circuit, but their primary business was transistors, and it seems that the military kept them very busy. Remember this was the late 50âs-early 60âs.
Soviet Russia put Sputnik in orbit just a few years earlier in 1957. The Communist Revolution in Cuba was in 1959.
Now remember, these engineers left what was likely a very well paid job, because they were spending so much effort to supporting the Department of Defense. While they were leaving Fairchild, the month before they founded Signetics, the Berlin Wall completed construction. I imagine from their perspective, at the time, it wouldnât seem like it was going to change anytime soon.
Signetics has the distinction of being the first company founded with the specific purpose of designing, manufacturing, and marketing Integrated Circuits and they were very good at it.
The name Signetics comes from 'SIGnal NETwork ElectronICS'. The plan was to make ASICs or Application Specific Integrated Circuits targeting specific customers, like the D O D. It was a solid plan and nobody was doing that yet.
After living at 680 W Maude Ave for a year, Corning Glass Works paid $2.25M for a 51% stake in Signetics. Just think: they started the business with $1 million less than 18 months later and grew it 4.5 times that value
David James, a co-founder and first president of the company, left the Signetics in 1965, and by then Corning owned 82% of it. Soon after, the president of Corning Glass Works was elected to be the new Chairman of the Board of Signetics. So, by the late 1960s, Signetics no longer had the same culture that it began with. It was essentially another division of the Corning company.
Hans Camenzind
Now, I have set the stage.
The year was 1968 when our hero enters the story. Hans Camenzind.
Hans Camenzind was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1934. He studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a prominent institution in Zurich, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He then moved to the United States in 1960 and received a Masters of Electronic Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston.
Afterwards, he started working for P.R. Mallory and Company in Burlington, Massachusetts in 1962. P.R. Mallory was a leading battery designer and manufacturing company. Iâm not surprised if youâve never heard of P.R. Mallory, because, while Hans was working for them, in 1964 they started rebranding to Duracell Battery. This is actually pretty neat, because in my collection I have some Mallory branded tubes and other components. They were essentially made by Duracell Battery and that is kind of neat.
When he was a student at Northeastern University, he would sometimes go study at M.I.T.âs library and read old journals. This time of his life very much informed his future career. I found a quote from him about his experiences in this library.
âI went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and underneath the circular white dome, on the 6th and 7th floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers). There was no index, no computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase locked loop [PLL]. I had never heard of it before. I looked at it and it was a very obscure concept; it was used to lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.â
While working at P.R. Mallory, he pushed for them to let him develop P L L devices, but they really werenât interested in it at all, as they were a battery and material manufacturer. This is what caused him to leave P.R. Mallory and move out west to Santa Clara, California to work with Signetics. At his heart he knew he wanted to design Analog Integrated Circuits and work with P L L concepts.
From 1968 to 1970, while working at Signetics, he was responsible for the NE565, NE566, and the NE567.
The NE565 was the first practical and marketable Phase-Lock-Loop IC Device and was used heavily in FM demodulation applications. The NE566 was a simple âfunction generatorâ. It was a popular Sine Wave and Square Wave generator. The NE567 was a Tone Decoder. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this trio of ICs was very popular and used for Touch Tone Phone Automatic Switchboards. Thatâs pretty cool.
At this time, I would like to ask you to let me take a moment and talk about Cyber City Circuits. Iâll make it quick. Cyber City Circuits was established in 2018 in Augusta, Ga. We offer an assortment of services, including low-to-medium volume PCB Assembly, PCB Design, Prototyping, QC Testing, and more. We also do custom designs, PCB badges, Custom Soldering Kits, etc. Please keep us in mind, next time you find you have PCB design and assembly needs. Now back to the show.
The Invention of The 555 Timer
In 1970 there was a nation-wide recession. Within the electronic components industry, the recession was credited to inflation, overcapacity, excess inventory, and increased competition from newer, more agile companies, like Intel. By this time Hans had become disenchanted by the direction Signetics was moving and in 1970, the corporate powers asked Hans to resign and he did. In 1970, Signetics would downsize their engineering departments by 50%.
Now, remember that a couple years before Hans started working at Signetics, Corning started buying up Signetics stock and the culture was changing. In interviews he reflects on this time as a relief and he wanted to take the time to write a book, but by the beginning of 1971 Signetics came back to Hans, trying to get him back onboard. He declined and instead demanded a one-year independent contract position. He had an idea for a timer device and started a new company called InterDesign to contract with Signetics.
If you think about it, Signetics didnât invent the 555 timer, InterDesign did. Signetics just marketed it.
So, when he designed the 555 timer, he did so as an independent contractor and his first independent design job was the 555 timer. In interviews he says the office he rented was a small place in between two Chinese Food Restaurants. I was able to find the address that the 555 Timer was designed in, at 165 S Murphy Ave Suite B in Sunnyvale, CA. It is still there today and it is an office for a real estate broker.
During this time, he went the University of Santa Clara in the evening to get his Masterâs in Business Administration and taught classes there in the mornings. He did his contract work in the afternoons. He said that Signetics loaned him all of the equipment he needed and paid him $1200 dollars a month. When adjusted for inflation, $1200 dollars in 1971, is equal to over $9,000 dollars a month today, not bad for part time work.
He said it took him the full year to finish the 555 timer, six months breadboarding and proving the design concepts and six months working on the Rubylith layout. He claims that while the first prototype was nearly finished, he had to make a few minor adjustments before sending it back to Signetics for manufacturing. It was all done by hand, there were no computers. His final design had twenty-three transistors, sixteen resistors, and two diodes.
The 555 timer was first introduced in the â1972 Signetics Full Line Catalogâ, where it had an 8-page datasheet entry. A link to this book can be found in the show notes.
The 555 almost didnât happen at all. The heads of the engineering departments at Signetics didnât want to add the timer to their catalog of parts, because they had multiple devices that would pair together to perform the same functions, so they felt like it would kind of shoot themselves in the foot. It was, the marketing manager, Art Fury, that championed the 555 timer on the behalf of Hans Camenzind. So, without Art Fury, we may not have the 555 timer today. A little unsung hero action there. Thatâs pretty cool.
In Hansâ book âDesigning Analog Chipsâ he talks about the release of the 555 timer. He writes âThe market reaction to the 555 timer was truly amazing. Art Fury made history by bringing out the circuit at an unprecedented low price, 75 cents. I had deliberately made the design flexible, but nine out of ten applications were in areas and ways I had never contemplated. For months I was inundated by phone calls from engineers who had a new idea for using the timer. To this day the 555 has been the best-selling IC every year, copied by numerous companies. Except for a CMOS version, the design has never been changed.â
A Post 555 Timer World
By the end of 1972, Signetics knew they had a hit on their hands. It had become the best-selling IC in history in its first year and it continues to be even today. They published special application guidebooks and really pushed marketing the device and in November of 1973 they went from needing to downsize their staff in 1970 to holding their Initial Public Offering or IPO, where they sold shares for $17 dollars a share. That is the same as $117 dollars today, which I would say makes for a very successful IPO.
It doesnât stop there, two years after that in 1975, Signetics was purchased out-right by Phillips, eventually becoming Phillips Semiconductor and then, many years later, spun back off as NXP Semiconductors. I canât find much in the line of âAnnual Reportsâ and Financial Reports from Signetics during this time, but my research makes it look like the 555 timer really helped pull Signetics back from the edge.
Hans continued his independent work as InterDesign, taking design and consulting contracts from different companies and in 1977 InterDesign was purchased by Ferranti. A year earlier Ferranti introduced the 16-Bit F100-L, which was the first microprocessor designed in Europe to enter the market.
InterDesign would go on to develop a product called âMonoChipâ which is a precursor to modern FPGAs and allowed for smaller organizations develop an Application Specific Integrated Circuit in a more cost-effective way.
After the sale of InterDesign he continued to teach and sell independent deisgn consulting work. Hans designed more than 150 ICs and held more than 20 patents.
Hans wrote three books, including âDesigning Analog Chipsâ in 2005 and âMuch Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electronâ in 2008.
Hans Camenzind passed away in his sleep in 2012 at his home in Los Altos, California. Hans Camenzindâs career has had an impact on the world, that very few have had. He is in the same tier as Gordon Moore, Jack Kilby, Bob Noyce, Jack Haenichen and more.
Thank you for your time.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_RiQZ3WoAAejVW.png)
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The 555 Story
In electronics design, there are few components that are still regularly used in new products from for over fifty years. This integrated circuit quietly oscillates, pulses, and times its way into an impressive array of gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. Designed by Swiss engineer Hans Camenzind in the 1971 for the company Signetics, it has the distinction of being the most successful and best-selling Integrated Circuits in history. In this episode, weâre going to go through the story of the most prolific Integrated Circuit, the 555 timer.
A Split From Fairchild
In 1959, a designer named Bob Noyce created a groundbreaking invention at Fairchild Semiconductor. This invention was none other than the very first monolithic silicon integrated circuit chip. This chip was a significant technological advancement, as it allowed multiple electronic components to be combined onto a single piece of semiconductor material. This development paved the way for the modern computer age, revolutionizing the field of electronics and shaping the world as we know it today. Microchips were the future, everyone knew it. Youâll hear more about Bob Noyce in a future episode, as he and Gordon Moore started Intel in the late 60s.
Signetics was founded on Sept 12, 1961 by four Fairchild engineers, David Allison, David James, Lionel Kattner, and Mark Weissenstern.
A story of the early days of Signetics can be found in an interview with Lionel Kattner on YouTube. He claimed that Mark Weissenstern approached him regarding launching a business. It appears that David Allison and David James were already affiliated with this splinter group. These men were Fairchild engineers working on Integrated Circuit Development project. Fairchild was too preoccupied with the Transistor Market, so they had to watch their work, which had the potential to change the world, languish.
In June 1961, David James and Lionel Kattner met with Lehman Brothers about investment to start an Integrated Circuits company and Lehman Brothers invested $1M.
This is the equivalent to $10.3M today.
Then in September, they all left Fairchild Semiconductor and soon after moved into an eighteen thousand square foot building at 680 W Maude Ave in Sunnyvale, California.
Signetics
Fairchild Semiconductor and Bob Noyce are credited in inventing the Monolithic Integrated Circuit, but their primary business was transistors, and it seems that the military kept them very busy. Remember this was the late 50âs-early 60âs.
Soviet Russia put Sputnik in orbit just a few years earlier in 1957. The Communist Revolution in Cuba was in 1959.
Now remember, these engineers left what was likely a very well paid job, because they were spending so much effort to supporting the Department of Defense. While they were leaving Fairchild, the month before they founded Signetics, the Berlin Wall completed construction. I imagine from their perspective, at the time, it wouldnât seem like it was going to change anytime soon.
Signetics has the distinction of being the first company founded with the specific purpose of designing, manufacturing, and marketing Integrated Circuits and they were very good at it.
The name Signetics comes from 'SIGnal NETwork ElectronICS'. The plan was to make ASICs or Application Specific Integrated Circuits targeting specific customers, like the D O D. It was a solid plan and nobody was doing that yet.
After living at 680 W Maude Ave for a year, Corning Glass Works paid $2.25M for a 51% stake in Signetics. Just think: they started the business with $1 million less than 18 months later and grew it 4.5 times that value
David James, a co-founder and first president of the company, left the Signetics in 1965, and by then Corning owned 82% of it. Soon after, the president of Corning Glass Works was elected to be the new Chairman of the Board of Signetics. So, by the late 1960s, Signetics no longer had the same culture that it began with. It was essentially another division of the Corning company.
Hans Camenzind
Now, I have set the stage.
The year was 1968 when our hero enters the story. Hans Camenzind.
Hans Camenzind was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1934. He studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a prominent institution in Zurich, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He then moved to the United States in 1960 and received a Masters of Electronic Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston.
Afterwards, he started working for P.R. Mallory and Company in Burlington, Massachusetts in 1962. P.R. Mallory was a leading battery designer and manufacturing company. Iâm not surprised if youâve never heard of P.R. Mallory, because, while Hans was working for them, in 1964 they started rebranding to Duracell Battery. This is actually pretty neat, because in my collection I have some Mallory branded tubes and other components. They were essentially made by Duracell Battery and that is kind of neat.
When he was a student at Northeastern University, he would sometimes go study at M.I.T.âs library and read old journals. This time of his life very much informed his future career. I found a quote from him about his experiences in this library.
âI went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and underneath the circular white dome, on the 6th and 7th floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers). There was no index, no computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase locked loop [PLL]. I had never heard of it before. I looked at it and it was a very obscure concept; it was used to lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.â
While working at P.R. Mallory, he pushed for them to let him develop P L L devices, but they really werenât interested in it at all, as they were a battery and material manufacturer. This is what caused him to leave P.R. Mallory and move out west to Santa Clara, California to work with Signetics. At his heart he knew he wanted to design Analog Integrated Circuits and work with P L L concepts.
From 1968 to 1970, while working at Signetics, he was responsible for the NE565, NE566, and the NE567.
The NE565 was the first practical and marketable Phase-Lock-Loop IC Device and was used heavily in FM demodulation applications. The NE566 was a simple âfunction generatorâ. It was a popular Sine Wave and Square Wave generator. The NE567 was a Tone Decoder. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this trio of ICs was very popular and used for Touch Tone Phone Automatic Switchboards. Thatâs pretty cool.
At this time, I would like to ask you to let me take a moment and talk about Cyber City Circuits. Iâll make it quick. Cyber City Circuits was established in 2018 in Augusta, Ga. We offer an assortment of services, including low-to-medium volume PCB Assembly, PCB Design, Prototyping, QC Testing, and more. We also do custom designs, PCB badges, Custom Soldering Kits, etc. Please keep us in mind, next time you find you have PCB design and assembly needs. Now back to the show.
The Invention of The 555 Timer
In 1970 there was a nation-wide recession. Within the electronic components industry, the recession was credited to inflation, overcapacity, excess inventory, and increased competition from newer, more agile companies, like Intel. By this time Hans had become disenchanted by the direction Signetics was moving and in 1970, the corporate powers asked Hans to resign and he did. In 1970, Signetics would downsize their engineering departments by 50%.
Now, remember that a couple years before Hans started working at Signetics, Corning started buying up Signetics stock and the culture was changing. In interviews he reflects on this time as a relief and he wanted to take the time to write a book, but by the beginning of 1971 Signetics came back to Hans, trying to get him back onboard. He declined and instead demanded a one-year independent contract position. He had an idea for a timer device and started a new company called InterDesign to contract with Signetics.
If you think about it, Signetics didnât invent the 555 timer, InterDesign did. Signetics just marketed it.
So, when he designed the 555 timer, he did so as an independent contractor and his first independent design job was the 555 timer. In interviews he says the office he rented was a small place in between two Chinese Food Restaurants. I was able to find the address that the 555 Timer was designed in, at 165 S Murphy Ave Suite B in Sunnyvale, CA. It is still there today and it is an office for a real estate broker.
During this time, he went the University of Santa Clara in the evening to get his Masterâs in Business Administration and taught classes there in the mornings. He did his contract work in the afternoons. He said that Signetics loaned him all of the equipment he needed and paid him $1200 dollars a month. When adjusted for inflation, $1200 dollars in 1971, is equal to over $9,000 dollars a month today, not bad for part time work.
He said it took him the full year to finish the 555 timer, six months breadboarding and proving the design concepts and six months working on the Rubylith layout. He claims that while the first prototype was nearly finished, he had to make a few minor adjustments before sending it back to Signetics for manufacturing. It was all done by hand, there were no computers. His final design had twenty-three transistors, sixteen resistors, and two diodes.
The 555 timer was first introduced in the â1972 Signetics Full Line Catalogâ, where it had an 8-page datasheet entry. A link to this book can be found in the show notes.
The 555 almost didnât happen at all. The heads of the engineering departments at Signetics didnât want to add the timer to their catalog of parts, because they had multiple devices that would pair together to perform the same functions, so they felt like it would kind of shoot themselves in the foot. It was, the marketing manager, Art Fury, that championed the 555 timer on the behalf of Hans Camenzind. So, without Art Fury, we may not have the 555 timer today. A little unsung hero action there. Thatâs pretty cool.
In Hansâ book âDesigning Analog Chipsâ he talks about the release of the 555 timer. He writes âThe market reaction to the 555 timer was truly amazing. Art Fury made history by bringing out the circuit at an unprecedented low price, 75 cents. I had deliberately made the design flexible, but nine out of ten applications were in areas and ways I had never contemplated. For months I was inundated by phone calls from engineers who had a new idea for using the timer. To this day the 555 has been the best-selling IC every year, copied by numerous companies. Except for a CMOS version, the design has never been changed.â
A Post 555 Timer World
By the end of 1972, Signetics knew they had a hit on their hands. It had become the best-selling IC in history in its first year and it continues to be even today. They published special application guidebooks and really pushed marketing the device and in November of 1973 they went from needing to downsize their staff in 1970 to holding their Initial Public Offering or IPO, where they sold shares for $17 dollars a share. That is the same as $117 dollars today, which I would say makes for a very successful IPO.
It doesnât stop there, two years after that in 1975, Signetics was purchased out-right by Phillips, eventually becoming Phillips Semiconductor and then, many years later, spun back off as NXP Semiconductors. I canât find much in the line of âAnnual Reportsâ and Financial Reports from Signetics during this time, but my research makes it look like the 555 timer really helped pull Signetics back from the edge.
Hans continued his independent work as InterDesign, taking design and consulting contracts from different companies and in 1977 InterDesign was purchased by Ferranti. A year earlier Ferranti introduced the 16-Bit F100-L, which was the first microprocessor designed in Europe to enter the market.
InterDesign would go on to develop a product called âMonoChipâ which is a precursor to modern FPGAs and allowed for smaller organizations develop an Application Specific Integrated Circuit in a more cost-effective way.
After the sale of InterDesign he continued to teach and sell independent deisgn consulting work. Hans designed more than 150 ICs and held more than 20 patents.
Hans wrote three books, including âDesigning Analog Chipsâ in 2005 and âMuch Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electronâ in 2008.
Hans Camenzind passed away in his sleep in 2012 at his home in Los Altos, California. Hans Camenzindâs career has had an impact on the world, that very few have had. He is in the same tier as Gordon Moore, Jack Kilby, Bob Noyce, Jack Haenichen and more.
Thank you for your time.
![MakeAugusta's tweet photo. The 555 Story
In electronics design, there are few components that are still regularly used in new products from for over fifty years. This integrated circuit quietly oscillates, pulses, and times its way into an impressive array of gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. Designed by Swiss engineer Hans Camenzind in the 1971 for the company Signetics, it has the distinction of being the most successful and best-selling Integrated Circuits in history. In this episode, weâre going to go through the story of the most prolific Integrated Circuit, the 555 timer.
A Split From Fairchild
In 1959, a designer named Bob Noyce created a groundbreaking invention at Fairchild Semiconductor. This invention was none other than the very first monolithic silicon integrated circuit chip. This chip was a significant technological advancement, as it allowed multiple electronic components to be combined onto a single piece of semiconductor material. This development paved the way for the modern computer age, revolutionizing the field of electronics and shaping the world as we know it today. Microchips were the future, everyone knew it. Youâll hear more about Bob Noyce in a future episode, as he and Gordon Moore started Intel in the late 60s.
Signetics was founded on Sept 12, 1961 by four Fairchild engineers, David Allison, David James, Lionel Kattner, and Mark Weissenstern.
A story of the early days of Signetics can be found in an interview with Lionel Kattner on YouTube. He claimed that Mark Weissenstern approached him regarding launching a business. It appears that David Allison and David James were already affiliated with this splinter group. These men were Fairchild engineers working on Integrated Circuit Development project. Fairchild was too preoccupied with the Transistor Market, so they had to watch their work, which had the potential to change the world, languish.
In June 1961, David James and Lionel Kattner met with Lehman Brothers about investment to start an Integrated Circuits company and Lehman Brothers invested $1M.
This is the equivalent to $10.3M today.
Then in September, they all left Fairchild Semiconductor and soon after moved into an eighteen thousand square foot building at 680 W Maude Ave in Sunnyvale, California.
Signetics
Fairchild Semiconductor and Bob Noyce are credited in inventing the Monolithic Integrated Circuit, but their primary business was transistors, and it seems that the military kept them very busy. Remember this was the late 50âs-early 60âs.
Soviet Russia put Sputnik in orbit just a few years earlier in 1957. The Communist Revolution in Cuba was in 1959.
Now remember, these engineers left what was likely a very well paid job, because they were spending so much effort to supporting the Department of Defense. While they were leaving Fairchild, the month before they founded Signetics, the Berlin Wall completed construction. I imagine from their perspective, at the time, it wouldnât seem like it was going to change anytime soon.
Signetics has the distinction of being the first company founded with the specific purpose of designing, manufacturing, and marketing Integrated Circuits and they were very good at it.
The name Signetics comes from 'SIGnal NETwork ElectronICS'. The plan was to make ASICs or Application Specific Integrated Circuits targeting specific customers, like the D O D. It was a solid plan and nobody was doing that yet.
After living at 680 W Maude Ave for a year, Corning Glass Works paid $2.25M for a 51% stake in Signetics. Just think: they started the business with $1 million less than 18 months later and grew it 4.5 times that value
David James, a co-founder and first president of the company, left the Signetics in 1965, and by then Corning owned 82% of it. Soon after, the president of Corning Glass Works was elected to be the new Chairman of the Board of Signetics. So, by the late 1960s, Signetics no longer had the same culture that it began with. It was essentially another division of the Corning company.
Hans Camenzind
Now, I have set the stage.
The year was 1968 when our hero enters the story. Hans Camenzind.
Hans Camenzind was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1934. He studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a prominent institution in Zurich, earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. He then moved to the United States in 1960 and received a Masters of Electronic Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston.
Afterwards, he started working for P.R. Mallory and Company in Burlington, Massachusetts in 1962. P.R. Mallory was a leading battery designer and manufacturing company. Iâm not surprised if youâve never heard of P.R. Mallory, because, while Hans was working for them, in 1964 they started rebranding to Duracell Battery. This is actually pretty neat, because in my collection I have some Mallory branded tubes and other components. They were essentially made by Duracell Battery and that is kind of neat.
When he was a student at Northeastern University, he would sometimes go study at M.I.T.âs library and read old journals. This time of his life very much informed his future career. I found a quote from him about his experiences in this library.
âI went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and underneath the circular white dome, on the 6th and 7th floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers). There was no index, no computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase locked loop [PLL]. I had never heard of it before. I looked at it and it was a very obscure concept; it was used to lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.â
While working at P.R. Mallory, he pushed for them to let him develop P L L devices, but they really werenât interested in it at all, as they were a battery and material manufacturer. This is what caused him to leave P.R. Mallory and move out west to Santa Clara, California to work with Signetics. At his heart he knew he wanted to design Analog Integrated Circuits and work with P L L concepts.
From 1968 to 1970, while working at Signetics, he was responsible for the NE565, NE566, and the NE567.
The NE565 was the first practical and marketable Phase-Lock-Loop IC Device and was used heavily in FM demodulation applications. The NE566 was a simple âfunction generatorâ. It was a popular Sine Wave and Square Wave generator. The NE567 was a Tone Decoder. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this trio of ICs was very popular and used for Touch Tone Phone Automatic Switchboards. Thatâs pretty cool.
At this time, I would like to ask you to let me take a moment and talk about Cyber City Circuits. Iâll make it quick. Cyber City Circuits was established in 2018 in Augusta, Ga. We offer an assortment of services, including low-to-medium volume PCB Assembly, PCB Design, Prototyping, QC Testing, and more. We also do custom designs, PCB badges, Custom Soldering Kits, etc. Please keep us in mind, next time you find you have PCB design and assembly needs. Now back to the show.
The Invention of The 555 Timer
In 1970 there was a nation-wide recession. Within the electronic components industry, the recession was credited to inflation, overcapacity, excess inventory, and increased competition from newer, more agile companies, like Intel. By this time Hans had become disenchanted by the direction Signetics was moving and in 1970, the corporate powers asked Hans to resign and he did. In 1970, Signetics would downsize their engineering departments by 50%.
Now, remember that a couple years before Hans started working at Signetics, Corning started buying up Signetics stock and the culture was changing. In interviews he reflects on this time as a relief and he wanted to take the time to write a book, but by the beginning of 1971 Signetics came back to Hans, trying to get him back onboard. He declined and instead demanded a one-year independent contract position. He had an idea for a timer device and started a new company called InterDesign to contract with Signetics.
If you think about it, Signetics didnât invent the 555 timer, InterDesign did. Signetics just marketed it.
So, when he designed the 555 timer, he did so as an independent contractor and his first independent design job was the 555 timer. In interviews he says the office he rented was a small place in between two Chinese Food Restaurants. I was able to find the address that the 555 Timer was designed in, at 165 S Murphy Ave Suite B in Sunnyvale, CA. It is still there today and it is an office for a real estate broker.
During this time, he went the University of Santa Clara in the evening to get his Masterâs in Business Administration and taught classes there in the mornings. He did his contract work in the afternoons. He said that Signetics loaned him all of the equipment he needed and paid him $1200 dollars a month. When adjusted for inflation, $1200 dollars in 1971, is equal to over $9,000 dollars a month today, not bad for part time work.
He said it took him the full year to finish the 555 timer, six months breadboarding and proving the design concepts and six months working on the Rubylith layout. He claims that while the first prototype was nearly finished, he had to make a few minor adjustments before sending it back to Signetics for manufacturing. It was all done by hand, there were no computers. His final design had twenty-three transistors, sixteen resistors, and two diodes.
The 555 timer was first introduced in the â1972 Signetics Full Line Catalogâ, where it had an 8-page datasheet entry. A link to this book can be found in the show notes.
The 555 almost didnât happen at all. The heads of the engineering departments at Signetics didnât want to add the timer to their catalog of parts, because they had multiple devices that would pair together to perform the same functions, so they felt like it would kind of shoot themselves in the foot. It was, the marketing manager, Art Fury, that championed the 555 timer on the behalf of Hans Camenzind. So, without Art Fury, we may not have the 555 timer today. A little unsung hero action there. Thatâs pretty cool.
In Hansâ book âDesigning Analog Chipsâ he talks about the release of the 555 timer. He writes âThe market reaction to the 555 timer was truly amazing. Art Fury made history by bringing out the circuit at an unprecedented low price, 75 cents. I had deliberately made the design flexible, but nine out of ten applications were in areas and ways I had never contemplated. For months I was inundated by phone calls from engineers who had a new idea for using the timer. To this day the 555 has been the best-selling IC every year, copied by numerous companies. Except for a CMOS version, the design has never been changed.â
A Post 555 Timer World
By the end of 1972, Signetics knew they had a hit on their hands. It had become the best-selling IC in history in its first year and it continues to be even today. They published special application guidebooks and really pushed marketing the device and in November of 1973 they went from needing to downsize their staff in 1970 to holding their Initial Public Offering or IPO, where they sold shares for $17 dollars a share. That is the same as $117 dollars today, which I would say makes for a very successful IPO.
It doesnât stop there, two years after that in 1975, Signetics was purchased out-right by Phillips, eventually becoming Phillips Semiconductor and then, many years later, spun back off as NXP Semiconductors. I canât find much in the line of âAnnual Reportsâ and Financial Reports from Signetics during this time, but my research makes it look like the 555 timer really helped pull Signetics back from the edge.
Hans continued his independent work as InterDesign, taking design and consulting contracts from different companies and in 1977 InterDesign was purchased by Ferranti. A year earlier Ferranti introduced the 16-Bit F100-L, which was the first microprocessor designed in Europe to enter the market.
InterDesign would go on to develop a product called âMonoChipâ which is a precursor to modern FPGAs and allowed for smaller organizations develop an Application Specific Integrated Circuit in a more cost-effective way.
After the sale of InterDesign he continued to teach and sell independent deisgn consulting work. Hans designed more than 150 ICs and held more than 20 patents.
Hans wrote three books, including âDesigning Analog Chipsâ in 2005 and âMuch Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electronâ in 2008.
Hans Camenzind passed away in his sleep in 2012 at his home in Los Altos, California. Hans Camenzindâs career has had an impact on the world, that very few have had. He is in the same tier as Gordon Moore, Jack Kilby, Bob Noyce, Jack Haenichen and more.
Thank you for your time.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_RiXlwWIAALGG7.png)
@LuisMiNegocios Bestial !!!
@oso_tramposo Joya !!!
We talked to this guy who says that some of us are no longer human.
@Guadarios A veces se me olvida que Alan tiene la habilidad de teletransportarse y el no usa carros ni aviones, mientras viaja, literalmente su trabajo.
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