Texas Instruments history

On December 6, 1941, Eugene McDermott, Cecil Green, Erik Jonsson, and H.B. Peacock bought GSI.

Texas Instruments entered the defense electronics market in 1942 with submarine detection equipment, based on the seismic exploration technology previously developed for the oil industry.

In November 1945, Patrick Haggerty was hired as general manager of the Laboratory and Manufacturing (L&M) division, which focused on electronic equipment.

1946: Patrick E. Haggerty joins the company; the Laboratory and Manufacturing (L&M) division is created.

The new building opened in 1947.

In 1949 Texas Instruments was still a relatively small company with $6 million in sales.

The grown junction transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories in April 1950 by Morgan Sparks and was an important verification of Shockley’s theory of the junction transistor.

The alloy junction transistor was invented by John Saby at General Electric in March 1951.

Hall R 1952 P-N Junctions Produced by Growth Rate Variation Phys Rev 88 139

On January 1, 1953, Haggerty brought Gordon Teal to the company as a research director.

The new Regency Radio was introduced in late 1954 and became the hot gift item of the 1954 Christmas season.

The device was first developed in 1955 as the X-36 for a servo-amplifier by increasing the cross section of the bar to 125 mils square giving nearly 5 times the cross sectional area of the first silicon transistors and soldering the collector end to a copper header.

By 1956 the alloy junction range was extended using JEDEC type numbers and included:

In 1957 the 900 series were replaced by JEDEC types

Electronics Design Strategy News 1958 Self-contained TV receiver uses 24 transistors EDN September 1, 1958 http://www.edn.com/article/463621-Self_contained_TV_receiver_uses_24_transistors.php

Advertisement from Proc IRE from February 1959 Courtesy Joe Knight

In the 1960s, Texas Instruments began developing laser-guided bombs (LGB), the first being BOLT-117.

Teal quotes Fortune magazine for November 1961:

In 1964 the Texas Instruments Foundation was started as a separate, nonprofit organization.

Haggerty wanted to develop mass consumer applications for ICs, and so in 1965 he commissioned Kilby to design an affordable electronic pocket calculator.

In 1966, Haggerty was elected chairman of TI's board when Jonsson left to become mayor of Dallas.

By 1967, the same year that Haggerty became TI’s chairman, Kilby succeeded in inventing the basic design for hand-held calculators.

Another important breakthrough came in 1969, when IBM began using integrated circuits in all its computers.

1970: The single-chip microprocessor is developed.

Bowmar Instruments had been selling a calculator that used TI-made chips since 1971.

Mark Shepherd was named chairman of the board upon Patrick Haggerty's retirement in 1976, and J. Fred Bucy, who had worked in almost all of TI's major business areas, was named president and remained chief operating officer.

When low-cost Asian imports flooded the market in 1978, however, Texas Instruments began to lose its dominant position.

The germanium alloy transistor operations were shut down on June 1, 1979.

Texas Instruments 1980 Proc 25th Anniversary Observance of the Transistor Radio and Silicon Transistor, March 17th 1980

1981: TI's corporate quality director is appointed, heralding the start of a Total Quality focus.

Motorola, which originally developed the Six Sigma methodology, began this work in 1982.

By the time the 99/4A was withdrawn from the market, TI's usual competitive-pricing strategy had reduced the computer's retail price below the company's production cost, causing TI's first-ever loss, $145 million, in 1983.

Goldstein A 1984 “Finding the Best Material: Gordon Teal as Inventor and Manager,” in Sparks of Genius: Portraits of Electrical Engineering Excellence, ed.

Wolff M 1985 The Secret six-month project IEEE Spectrum December 1985 64-9

In 1986 Texas Instruments was threatened by the tremendous worldwide expansion in memory chip capacity.

Geophysical Service Inc. became a subsidiary of Texas Instruments in the reorganization, which it remained until early 1988, when most of the company was sold to the Halliburton Company.

A 1990 partnership with the Italian government allowed the shared construction expenses of a $1.2 billion plant.

Why should you make something out of silicon when you already have germanium?” [Goldstein 1991]

In 1992, the firm won the coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in manufacturing and adopted the Baldrige criteria as its quality standards.

Davis P Kleiner D 1993 The Breakthrough Breadboard Feasibility Model: The Development of the First All-Transistor Radio The Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Joint ventures with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Hitachi, Ltd. in 1994 split the costs of building semiconductor plants in Portugal and the United States, respectively.

haber, carol. "ti defense sell-off would suit street." electronic news, 11 november 1996.

In January 1997 it agreed to sell its defense electronics business to Raytheon and its notebook-computer business to Acer.

In March 1998 Texas Instruments pulled out of a joint venture with The Acer Group to produce DRAM chips.

1999: TI's eXpressDSP(TM) Real-time Software technology is released.

The company's main businesses include semiconductors, which accounted for 87 percent of revenues in 2000; educational and productivity solutions; sensors and controls; and digital light processing (DLP) products.

Ward J 2001 Oral History of Elmer Wolff August 2001

Ward J 2002 Oral History of D D McBride taken January 2002 http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/TexasInstruments/OralHistories/McBride/McBride_Index.htm

Heavily dependent on that segment, TI's profits began to drop off dramatically and were not expected to return until sometime in 2003.

Texas Instruments Incorporated 1ed 2005

Millis E 2006 Cornelison Crystal Puller Sketch 14th March 2006 Unpublished

TI's first power transistors were the 356 and 356A rated at 12 watts which became the 2N250 and 2N251. [Knight 2007]

Tanebaum M 2008 First-Hand: Beginning of the Silicon Age IEEE Global History Network August 2008

With the acquisition of National Semiconductor in 2011, Texas Instruments has become the biggest manufacturer of analog technology in the world.