Mannerisms

In May 1969, SGS, the forerunner of STMicroelectronics, which in those days had a Scottish connection with a facility at Falkirk, held a lunch at the Carlton Tower Hotel to which not only was Miss Scotland invited, but also the Minister of State at the Scottish Office, Dr Dickson Mabon

Christian names are so much the norm for office life these days we find it hard to believe that those ‘Take a letter, Miss Smith’ or ‘Right away, Sir’ exchanges ever took place. But they did, and not so long ago.

“Custom masked ROMs are heading for trouble”, Intersil’s marketing manager, Colin Kidd, was quoted as saying in February 1972, “by next year, the market will have grown to the point where some five semiconductor manufacturers will each need to ship around 100 different ROM patterns a week – and that’s without reckoning programme changes, errors and so on. The costs and delays are going to be horrifying. Everything therefore points to the electrical programming of units – in the field if necessary.”

Surprise, surprise, Intersil was introducing a 1K PROM.

TOMMORROW MORNING: THE TEN BEST LOGIC CHIPS

In February 1972, describing the construction of an MOS IC for use in an electronic calculator at the company’s fab in Glenrothes, Dr Stephen Forte, joint managing director of General Instruments Microelectronics, said that two miles of paper tape were consumed during the design of the chip.

‘A new system to be installed in the near future will use tape cassettes for the input and storage of design data’, says an Electronics Weekly report.

‘This will allow, for example, data for each layer of a complex IC to be held on one cassette’, says the report.

TOMORROW MORNING: The Ten Best Analogue Chips

Charlie Sporck left Fairchild Semiconductor in 1967 to take over as CEO of National Semiconductor and become an industry legend. His impact on the company was pretty immediate as this press report, dated May 1969, observes:

Sixpence (2.5p) per bit is the cost of memory according to Core Memories quoted in the November 26th 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly under the headline: ‘Low-Cost Memory Systems Thrust.’

The first time a US president made a speech to Congress on Science and Technology was 36 years ago, in March 1972, when President Richard Nixon pointed out that government has a crucial role to play in the fostering of a nation’s innovative capabilities.

In 1957, the Royal Air Force started the development of a computerised personnel and pay system. In keeping with the general performance of computers in those days, which added to the gaiety of the nation with their cock-ups, the RAF's computer system came up with some spectacular boobs.

In the issue of Electronics Weekly for February 26th 1969 is a story which starts: "This week is the tenth anniversary of the UK's software industry, and Vaughan Programming Services of Ware, Herts, who started it all, are thriving under the direction of Mrs A St Johnston."

The Electronics Weekly edition of January 26th 1972 reads: ‘Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven are investigating the possible use of magnetic bubbles as information carriers’.

“By 1976, except for big data processing machines, no one will be designing in TTL.”

‘A ‘mystery effect’ in silicon has been harnessed by RCA to produce the most powerful pulses of radio energy in the UHF range yet achieved by a solid state device’, reported Electronics Weekly in its Nov 26 1969 edition.

‘The electronics industry will enter 1973 faced with severe shortages of many kinds of semiconductor devices, and with only limited prospects of an easier situation during the coming 12 months’, starts a story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of December 27th 1972.

There have been many fab closures in the UK over the years, NEC, Siemens, Atmel, DEC, to name but a few, but which was the very first fab closure?

‘With Britain’s proposed entry into the EC just over a month away, Plessey has strengthened its European regional organisation in readiness for an expansion of trade’, reported Electronics Weekly in its November 29 1972 edition.

Following the 1968 takeover of English Electric by Lord Arnold Weinstock’s GEC, the Marconi-Elliott Microelectronics Witham operation has been split into four mini-empires with each empire headed up by a product manager responsible for his own diffusion, R&D, production, sales, promotion, and profitability.

Electronics Weekly’s issue of November 29th 1972 reports the presentation of the MacRobert Award, described as the ‘Nobel Prize of Engineering’ to Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI for inventing the X-ray scanner.

Electronics Weekly’s issue of Feb 23 1972 has a story starting: ‘Britain seems to be at last waking up to the fact that its cable television operators, who now turn over a lively £15 million a year by piping TV programmes to nearly two million homes, hold the keys to what could be a vast national information grid, capable of supplying a whole host of specialised services from facsimile newspapers to community television’.

Under the headline: 'Cathode Ray Tube's Rivals Demonstrated', a front page story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of October 25th 1972 starts off: ‘The first commercial versions of Control Data Corp’s plasma display, the flat display panel which promises to rival the cathode ray tube in many alpha-numeric and graphic display applications, were demonstrated in London last week.’

‘With the announcement of Texas Instruments’ first family of medium-scale integrated circuits, the giant has stirred at last’, starts a story in the October 29th 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly.

“After reaching their lowest low ever during the recession, the semiconductor manufacturers producing TTL devices have now had the pendulum swinging the other way,” wrote Electronics Weekly in its Sept 27th 1972 edition.

“After reaching their lowest low ever during the recession, the semiconductor manufacturers producing TTL devices have now had the pendulum swinging the other way,” wrote Electronics Weekly in its Sept 27th 1972 edition.

A story datelined New York in the September 27th issue of Electronics Weekly, reads: “Texas Instruments has resigned from the US Electronics Industries Association in a dispute over the Association’s inability to take a strong free trade stand.”

'Boeing Didn’t Invent The Aeroplane'

Is the title of an ad running in Electronics Weekly’s edition of September 24 1969.

“Fairchild Semiconductors are taking significant steps to build up their marketing operations in Britain following their June announcement of their entry into the UK”, is how the lead story opens on Electronics Weekly’s front page of September 3rd 1969.

Two years since the first integrated circuits became available from Mullard’s Southampton facility, the groundwork for a ‘Ford type’ mass production unit has been built round that pilot installation. So starts a story in Electronics Weekly’s issue of September 24th 1969.

“As expected, the Post Office has been quick to react to acoustic coupling for use in data transmission and has drawn up ‘detailed standards to guide designers of this kind of apparatus’,” reads a story in Electronics Weekly’s issue of September 3rd 1969.

Colour TVs stole most of the limelight at last week’s radio and TV shows with manufacturers making an all out attempt to get sales moving against the tide of credit restrictions and somewhat alarming customer disinterest. That’s how a story starts in Electronics Weekly’s edition of September 3rd 1969.

In the first five months of this year, the Glenrothes plant of Marconi-Elliott Microelectronics has produced the same number of DTL ICs as they produced in the whole of 1968, and it is expected that this operation will become profitable this year.

“We shall never be able to practise medicine in the future, without exploiting some kinds of magnetic storage device,” said Dr Paul Hall, of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, in a story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of May 28 1969.

‘To ease their customers through the pangs of decimalisation, ICL are offering them file conversion programmes’, begins a story in Electronics Weekly’s issue of May 28th 1969.

Satellites casting all communications barriers aside, and making television and radio available to the world’s most inaccessible settlements are about to become a reality, according to Mr Fred Adler of the Hughes Aircraft Company, who presented the main lecture at the 6th International Television Exhibition and Symposium in Montreux last week.