Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an electronics developer and manufacturer with a design, manufacturing, or sales presence in 28 countries and more than 30,000 commercial and industrial customers worldwide. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, TI is one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers and is the market leader in designing and supplying digital signal processors (DSPs) and analog integrated circuit technologies. TI's DSPs are inside over 50% of wireless telephones and are also found inside such devices as modems and videocassette records. TI's semiconductor products include standard logic devices, application-specific integrated circuits, reduced instruction-set computing microprocessors, microcontrollers, and digital imaging devices. They are used in cellular telephones, personal computers, digital cameras and audio-players, and automobiles. TI produces millions of integrated circuits daily in numerous fabrication centers worldwide. In addition to semiconductors, TI also sells electrical and electronic controls, sensors, radio-frequency identification systems, and graphing and educational calculators. TI engineers have produced major advances in the electronics field, including the commercial silicon transistor, the integrated circuit, and the hand-held calculator.
Texas Instruments started operations in 1930 as Geophysical Service (GS), a Texas oil exploration company founded by John Karcher and Eugene McDermott. GS pioneered the use of sound-wave technology (reflection seismology) to locate oil deposits. GS soon incorporated as Geophysical Service, Inc. (GSI), and began working with the world's largest oil companies. The company quickly expanded, with a history of efficiency, honesty, and reliability. As a result of its success, management separated its oil production and oil exploration businesses in 1938. The parent company was renamed Coronado Corporation and GSI became a subsidiary. Just before World War II, cofounder Eugene McDermott, C. H. Green, J. E. Jonsson, and H. B. Peacock bought GSI. During the war, GSI expanded into research on electronic military equipment and production of submarine detection devices.
In order to emphasize the diversity of its electronic products the company's name was changed to General Instruments, Inc., but when a name conflict arose it was renamed Texas Instruments Inc. in 1951, with GSI as a subsidiary. McDermott became TI's first chairman and Jonsson its first president. At this time the company set three goals: (1) to continue developing and producing geophysical equipment and providing seismic services, (2) to become a major military systems provider, and (3) to enter emerging electronics technologies. TI's fateful moment came when Pat Haggerty suggested to Jonsson that they manufacture germanium transistors, a new Bell Laboratories invention. A license was purchased for $25,000, and in 1952 TI began to develop the transistor. By 1954 TI announced the production of the first commercial, portable, transistor radio, the Regency Radio. Its semiconductor devices occupied less than 1/10th of a cubic inch apiece, heralding the miniaturization of consumer electronics.
In 1954, while manufacturing the germanium transistor, TI developed the first commercial silicon transistor. It was smaller, less expensive, and operated more reliably than germanium transistors. This same year TI supplied transistors to the first United States satellite, Explorer 1. TI's electrical engineer Jack Kilby came to work for TI in 1958 in order to develop technology for circuit miniaturization. This research resulted in the integrated circuit, which more than any other single invention has made possible the microelectronics revolution of the last few decades.
In the 1960s Texas Instruments expanded globally, establishing facilities in South America, Europe, Asia, and Japan. In 1961, TI delivered its first integrated circuit (IC) computer to the Air Force, a machine 150 times smaller and weighing 48 times less than previously available computers of equivalent computing power. The computer showed that semiconductor networks were suitable for military equipment because of their reduced size, weight, and cost and increased reliability. In 1964, TI introduced the first IC consumer product, a hearing aid. The IC hearing aid out-performed the amplification of conventional devices and was more reliable. After two years of development TI released in 1967 the first electronic hand-held calculator. The battery-powered device could accept a number of up to six digits, performed the four basic arithmetic functions, and printed its results on a thermal printer. Also in the late 1960s TI provided precision switches, thermostats, transistors, and other semiconductor products for the Apollo missions to the Moon.
In 1971 TI built the first microcomputer structured around a single-chip logic circuit. In 1972 TI offered its TI-2500 portable calculator (along with the TI-3000 and TI-3500 desk models). In 1973, TI received a patent for the single-chip microprocessor, and the next year introduced the TMS-1000 single-chip microcomputer. TI also introduced the first single-chip speech synthesizer, the Speak & Spell, marking the first time the human voice was electronically duplicated on a silicon chip. In 1975 Texas Instruments produced the world's first inexpensive digital watch. In 1978, TI was awarded a patent for the microcomputer, the first integrated circuit with all computer elements on a single silicon chip.
During the 1980s TI introduced (1) a high-speed (5 million instructions per second), single-chip digital signal processor, (2) a specialized chip for intense mathematical computing, (3) the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor specifically for artificial intelligence applications, and (4) the first quantum-effect transistor, 100 times smaller and 1,000 times faster than conventional transistors.
Despite TI's many landmark inventions, it began to have difficulty with less expensive Asian competition. However, in 1989 a Japanese court upheld the patent for Kilby's integrated circuit and, as a result, a number of major electronics corporations were ordered to pay TI royalties. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the company entered into strategic partnerships to produce custom-designed electronic components.
Innovations by TI during the 1990s included (1) 125 million transistors placed on a chip; (2) digital signal processing application design-and-development tools on the Internet; (3) a silicon-based monolithic spatial light modulator, the "digital micromirror device"; and (5) the first optoelectronic integrated circuit.
TI is presently focusing on digital signal processors. and analog devices. Digital signal processors and analog semiconductors are at the heart of a wide range of communication achievements, from wireless cellular phones to high-speed broadband information access to the home, Internet-downloadable music devices, and digital cameras.
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