The Best Old Stuff Never Fades Away
by Paul McGoldrick
BBC America
currently has a Friday evening program line-up that lovers of 1960s British
cult television would pay for: and often have in the purchase of DVD sets.
The Avengers ("Mrs Peel, we're needed") is followed by Roger Moore playing The Saint and driving his gorgeous P1900 Volvo, with the evening topped by Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner ("I am not a number!") Anybody who appreciates (or even those chosen few who understand) the plots in The Prisoner needs, at some time in their life, to make a pilgrimage to Portmeirion on the Snowden Peninsula of North Wales where the outside scenes were filmed. Perhaps the new No. 2 will be at home in the Green Dome.
What other cult materials have survived so long? At the same time as these wonderful programs were being made, fortunately in color, the semiconductor industry in the United States was really starting to happen: the first IC was built in 1958 (not 1959, as often reported) by Noyce and Kilby; 1965 was the first integrated op amp; then the uA702 and uA709 from the original Fairchild, followed by the internally-compensated uA741 from the talented Dave Fullagar (now retired from Maxim, where he was one of the founders, and sorely missed).
All this came after the defection of the treacherous 8, who had the temerity to leave William Shockley -- a man whose hatred of black people almost consumed him, and who cursed out those who shared his Nobel prize. They left because of Shockley's management "style" and because he had developed a fixation for developing a layered diode. Those 8 put a personal, massive, $3500 into their company until Fairchild Camera and Instruments poured a small fortune into them in 1957. They were rewarded with an early order of 100 transistors from IBM, who paid $150 each for them!
When Schlumberger bought Fairchild in 1987, National Semiconductor bought the semiconductor operation and it wasn't reborn for 10 years. National itself started with a rebellious 8 in Danby, CT and only came to Santa Clara when the company bought Molectro.
Of all the great things that were developed in the formative years, what really stood out were Fullagar's compensated op amp, Hans Camenzind's NE555 timer at Signetics, and Bob Dobkin's (a founder of Linear Technology) 3-terminal adjustable voltage regulator and bipolar LDOs.
Just as it is great to sit and watch the cult programs of the 60s, it is also interesting to note that the sales of 741 op amps, and derivatives, are still very big business. The same is true with all that led from that first 3-terminal adjustable voltage regulator, and the massive quantity of LDO parts that have been -- and still are being -- shipped over the year. But the 555 stands out, it has been noted, as being the largest selling part number in semiconductor history.
What is quintessentially different about the modern versions of the 741 and 555 is that the processes have changed with the years to improve yield and performance, and to reduce cost.
Fortunately, DVD remastering is the only updated process our 1960s "danger
men" need. Otherwise, they're fine as they are…timelessly sipping
tea (or Steed's ever-present champagne) on a bluff overlooking the Stone
Boat as they wittily, effortlessly, foil every nefarious plot around. Unlike
our industry, they literally "don't make them like that anymore."