Semiconductor History

Contemporary Calculator with 100 MSI ICs and 82 Transistors It is widely accepted that a small company in California called Intel developed the world's first microprocessor in 1971. In the late 60s and early 70s there was significant interest from calculator companies to further reduce the size and cost of desktop calculators, and to create a new market for personal calculators. Calculators had for some time used discrete transistors, and latterly discrete logic and custom MSI ICs, but a single chip calculator was only a vision. However, there was another microprocessor development happening in Glenrothes Scotland, also designed for the burgeoning calculator market which may have beat Intel to the market, both in timing and performance. The Formation of Pico Electronics Ltd Elliott Automation was a significant British computer maker who in the 1960s realised the need to progress its own semiconductor technology. In 1966 the company established a facility in Glenrothes to manufactu...

Sinclair, TI and Philco Transistors Clive Sinclair formed Sinclair Radionics in 1961, having a good understanding of electronics and transistor manufacturing. Always the entrepreneur, he bought a quantity of transistor test failures from Semiconductors Limited (Semics) of Swindon. As seems to be the norm in British semiconductor history, it was convoluted. Semics was actually Plessey who had licensed Micro Alloy Diffused Transistor technology from Philco in the US. Sinclair used the transistors in a very small pre-amplifier and sold both the amplifier and retested/re-badged transistors separately. Later on he must have done this again as ST140 and ST141 transistors were on the market, albeit probably in relatively small quantities again. Above left is an ST140 Sinclair transistor. There is also an original Philco MADT transistor on the right. In the middle is a UK manufactured Texas Instruments transistor. Texas Instruments opened a semiconductor plant in Bedford, UK in 1960 to ...