Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pallette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: The stars at night shine big and bright. So this
Speaker 1: is going to be part two. It was almost part
Speaker 1: one of the history of Texas Instrument but thank goodness
Speaker 1: for the undo button because our producer deleted our first episode.
Speaker 1: And then yes, but we have to share that because
Speaker 1: we must shame him that, and and and we're still
Speaker 1: calming down. The breathing is returning, like, oh, we don't
Speaker 1: have to redo that, alright, So yes, part two of
Speaker 1: the History of Texas Instruments. Now, you may remember that
Speaker 1: in our last episode and the last episode of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: we left off where Texas Instruments had gone in D space.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, around around the time also when when
Speaker 1: Jack Kilby who uh was, was forced to work while
Speaker 1: everyone else was taking a break because he hadn't been
Speaker 1: with a company very long and had a crude vacation time,
Speaker 1: just fooling around the office and decided to come up
Speaker 1: with the integrated circuit. No big deal, just something he
Speaker 1: did on everyone else's vacation show. You guys, you will
Speaker 1: go to Hawaii. Wouldn't make an integrated circuit get more
Speaker 1: rewards than all of you put together? And he did?
Speaker 1: Um didn't, well maybe not put together. No, he didn't needn't.
Speaker 1: He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would
Speaker 1: do that. But in nine t I came out with
Speaker 1: the first commercial integrated circuit. Uh. Basically, you know it
Speaker 1: was commercialized the product, right, the one was clearly just
Speaker 1: a prototype, just as the transistor that Bell Labs made,
Speaker 1: uh like a decade earlier was to prototype more than
Speaker 1: a decade earlier. Yes, so they're they're starting to come
Speaker 1: on the market. And again something we talked about not
Speaker 1: too terribly long ago on tech stuff and something we
Speaker 1: have a nifty needo article about the first gallium arsenide
Speaker 1: solar cells were produced. Um. This is a period of
Speaker 1: intense development. Again, we're talking post war United States. There's
Speaker 1: a lot going on in in industry. Space race is
Speaker 1: starting to yep yep um, and there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on the company is uh we were we were talking
Speaker 1: about Mr. Haggarty, who had been a lieutenant in the
Speaker 1: United States Military who came on board after working with
Speaker 1: the company as a a manager for procurement, came on
Speaker 1: board and joined Texas Instruments. UH. He ended up being
Speaker 1: one of the company's very important leaders, and he came
Speaker 1: up with the objective strategies and tactics approach. UM. This
Speaker 1: is basically the kind of UH, you know, finding ways
Speaker 1: to get the semiconductor tech achnology that they had developed
Speaker 1: into all kinds of electronics and computing products. UM and
Speaker 1: you know, there were companies in Japan taking advantage of it.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of a couple of these guys,
Speaker 1: I don't know, um Mitsubishi, Sony, Canon, IBM Japan, and Furukawa,
Speaker 1: which was the parent company of Fujitsu. UM And basically
Speaker 1: t I became a supplier for these companies during this
Speaker 1: period in the early nineteen sixties, UM and UH you know,
Speaker 1: they they talked about the possibility in January of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, working with the Japanese government of UH coming
Speaker 1: up with a subsidiary of t I. It based in
Speaker 1: Japan itself. Um and basically they you know, they took
Speaker 1: him a little while, but they worked that out. UM.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know in the in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: you know, this is when t I was an industry
Speaker 1: leader and semi conductors and circuits. UM. They were supplying
Speaker 1: companies all over the world and they were developing international subsidiaries. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At that point, again, you wouldn't necessarily be owning a
Speaker 1: product that says Texas Instruments. You would be owning products
Speaker 1: that had lots of texture Texas Instruments components inside them.
Speaker 1: Because apart from the transistor radio that really helped Texas
Speaker 1: Instrument get a foothold in this industry. I mean that
Speaker 1: that demonstrated the power of the transistor. Apart from that,
Speaker 1: they really had not invested in the consumer electronics market
Speaker 1: at all. That just wasn't their focus. They were focused
Speaker 1: on corporate electronics. So they're electronic components. Yeah, sorry, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean their B two B if you will with
Speaker 1: you know, business to business. So they are they are
Speaker 1: an O E M manufacturer. They give the the parts
Speaker 1: to the guys who make the other stuff that you
Speaker 1: buy off the shelf. They make the other stuff possible. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a sky But actually B A s F does
Speaker 1: that kind of thing to so, um, they really do well.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's your Thingum, So, where where are you
Speaker 1: on your timeline? Nineteen sixty seven is about where I'm at. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixties seven, Texas Instruments went and invented
Speaker 1: the first handheld calculator. Yeah. Um, if you haven't ever
Speaker 1: been to t i's website t I dot com, you
Speaker 1: really should go and check out the interactive timeline because
Speaker 1: that's that's where I've gotten a lot of my information.
Speaker 1: But they actually have a picture of this thing. It
Speaker 1: looks like, Um, if you've ever seen the old style
Speaker 1: keyboard with a detachable number pad, this sucker is huge.
Speaker 1: It's pretty enormous, but but still is small compared to
Speaker 1: the calculating and adding machines that were popular at the time.
Speaker 1: And you gotta remember that before the integrated circuit, before
Speaker 1: the transistor, calculators were all mechanical devices. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: these were mechanically based calculators, and so the transistor in
Speaker 1: the integrade circuit really led to the electric calculator. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, Texas Instruments, Uh, they demonstrate the
Speaker 1: first handheld calculator. It's not meant for uh consumers yet.
Speaker 1: This was really again another prototype and it was able
Speaker 1: to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division and that's it.
Speaker 1: And it had eighteen keys at a visual output that
Speaker 1: displayed up to twelve decimal lights. What Yeah, twelve decimal
Speaker 1: digits all the way up to that um which, when
Speaker 1: you think about it at that time, extremely impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean this is in a way this is the
Speaker 1: beginning of the electronic computer industry as well. I mean
Speaker 1: there are other developments going on in various other companies,
Speaker 1: all at the same time, but this is leading the
Speaker 1: way to the consumer computer market. Developments like this really
Speaker 1: were very instrumental in that. Now in nineteen seventy one, oh,
Speaker 1: you have some more information between and just even Jack
Speaker 1: Kilby received the nineteen sixty nine National Medal of Science
Speaker 1: from President Richard M. Nixon on February friends. So just
Speaker 1: just a note, I tracked the Jack Kilby Express when
Speaker 1: I was going well. In nineteen seventy one, Texas Instruments
Speaker 1: develops the single chip microcomputer for calculators, which means that
Speaker 1: they've now reduced the circuitry, the size of the circuitry,
Speaker 1: the miniaturization process has gotten to the point where they
Speaker 1: can put everything that a calculator needs to be able
Speaker 1: to perform calculating functions on a single chip. Now, this,
Speaker 1: this coincides with this is like a demonstration of what
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore had said just a few years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore, as you may remember, was one of the
Speaker 1: co founders of Intel, Yes, and he had come up
Speaker 1: with this observation that we now call Moore's law. But
Speaker 1: truly it is an observation that the number of discrete
Speaker 1: elements on a UH on a given sized chip of
Speaker 1: silicon will double every twelve to twenty four months. The
Speaker 1: the actual number varies depending on when you look at
Speaker 1: Moore's law, but in general now we say every two
Speaker 1: years that the number of elements on a chip will double.
Speaker 1: So that means in effect that not only are they
Speaker 1: becoming twice as complex every two years, but twice as powerful.
Speaker 1: They're able to do twice as much as the ones
Speaker 1: from two years previous. So this is really kind of
Speaker 1: the single chip micro computer for calculators is kind of
Speaker 1: a demonstration for that. Just just two years previously, it
Speaker 1: would have taken a chip twice the size, or two
Speaker 1: chips to be able to do what they could fit
Speaker 1: on one chip in UH. So we're actually seeing Moore's
Speaker 1: law play out in the market. It's it's showing to
Speaker 1: be a true observation, which I think is really interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be until nineteen seventy two that Texas Instruments
Speaker 1: would introduce its own calculator to the marketplace. Up to
Speaker 1: that point, what Texas Instruments was doing was just what
Speaker 1: we've been saying all the time. They've been supplying elements
Speaker 1: to other manufacturers. But in seventy two they decided to
Speaker 1: get into the consumer marketplace with the t I hundred,
Speaker 1: which is not a terminator, uh, it is the data
Speaker 1: math calculator, which cost a hundred and forty nine dollars
Speaker 1: and nine cents as its retail price. And so this
Speaker 1: was the first consumer electronics piece that Texas Instruments had
Speaker 1: had really gone for since the radio and uh and
Speaker 1: and this one actually looks pretty clunky too, if you
Speaker 1: ever take a look at it. Yeah, it's it's big.
Speaker 1: It has that that um uh two thousand and one
Speaker 1: rounded space. Look and look to it which is I
Speaker 1: think characteristic of what the space age will look like
Speaker 1: when you're in nine seventy two, right right, it's very
Speaker 1: kind of modular, almost like you're looking at like this,
Speaker 1: this would fit aboard the space station in in uh
Speaker 1: two thousand one. Um, how could could do your taxes
Speaker 1: on it? I'll could do your taxes. I'm afraid I
Speaker 1: can't video right off on that, Dave. I'm afraid I'm
Speaker 1: not a dependent Dave. So my next date is in
Speaker 1: would that be for the SR fifty two? Actually, when
Speaker 1: Jack Kilby got the v k's Working Award from the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Engineering, so you definitely have the Jack
Speaker 1: Kilby Award Timeline. Oh yeah, I got it all right,
Speaker 1: Well we'll just keep going with that. Well, I just
Speaker 1: it just I mean, it's sort of a funny aside
Speaker 1: for me and apparently Jonathan, but it also shows how
Speaker 1: important the I C was. You know, Jack Kilby's family
Speaker 1: crest is a barracuda eating Neil Armstrong. Why do you
Speaker 1: do this? Okay? So yeah, that that was and also
Speaker 1: the thing that Jonathan, yes, the is the thing that
Speaker 1: Jonathan said, yes, a programmable calculator. It had magnetic card storage,
Speaker 1: which meant that you could actually program stuff on the
Speaker 1: calculator in order to do scientific calculations UM, which that
Speaker 1: was revolutionary as well. And it was again Texas Instruments
Speaker 1: own product. So this is another consumer product. It used
Speaker 1: the algebraic operating system which was developed by Texas Instruments itself,
Speaker 1: and it came with twenty two program cards and it
Speaker 1: costs just just a few bucks short of four dollars. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: three dollars. Had uh those program cards. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it said the t I sight says non volt non volatile.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking that that you couldn't do a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, programming and storage. I think I think
Speaker 1: it means that you couldn't make them explode. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: and they also in seventy five began to make another
Speaker 1: consumer product which other companies were working on as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also UM had had uh it featured in the
Speaker 1: works of a Mr. Douglas Adams digital watches. Yes stuff
Speaker 1: what beeps, Yeah, the digital watches, of course, we're uh,
Speaker 1: those were several companies were making digital watches at that point. Again,
Speaker 1: we've reached a point now where the integrated circuit has
Speaker 1: has reached level of manjurization where you could do some
Speaker 1: tiny circuits in a watch and replace the old analog
Speaker 1: watches with digital ones. And now, most digital watches at
Speaker 1: that time were a hundred dollars or more, maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty dollars or more. So Texas Instruments decided to
Speaker 1: try and aim for a lower price market, so most
Speaker 1: of their digital watches were priced at forty dollars or less.
Speaker 1: So that that helped them get a jump on on
Speaker 1: that particular segment because there were plenty of people who
Speaker 1: thought digital watches were pretty cool click Douglas Adams, but
Speaker 1: they just couldn't afford them. Yeah, a couple a couple
Speaker 1: of things that we UH skipped because my notes are frenetic.
Speaker 1: They have lots and lots of things in them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy three, uh t I founder Eugene McDermott passed
Speaker 1: away UM and nineteen seventy four there was a new
Speaker 1: program that t I established in the company called Idea
Speaker 1: and basically it was an R and D group where
Speaker 1: they wanted to see UH the I. The idea was
Speaker 1: that if an idea came through idea UM that managers
Speaker 1: were authorized to go ahead and give it the green light.
Speaker 1: You know. Oh dude, that's really cool, go with it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the educational uh materials that that
Speaker 1: t I produced later on were products of this particular
Speaker 1: group project. Yes, one of Jonathan's favorites, which will come
Speaker 1: up in a minute. That's why I wanted to set
Speaker 1: the stage because one of the things that they were
Speaker 1: working on was a speech synthesizer, yes, which does come
Speaker 1: in to play a second. So I just want to
Speaker 1: make sure that we we covered that real quick before
Speaker 1: we get into one of Jonathan A couple of Jonathan's
Speaker 1: favorite yeah. I actually the next two products I have
Speaker 1: to talk about I owned as a kid. R This
Speaker 1: dates me somewhat and I didn't so I thought they
Speaker 1: were cool, but I didn't have one. In nineteen seventies six,
Speaker 1: Texas Instruments introduced the Little Professor, which looks like a
Speaker 1: calculator with a little owl like visage on the calculator
Speaker 1: and guys wearing a miter board. Yeah, he's he's yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got he's got one on the top of his
Speaker 1: head where actually the black part of the calculator there's
Speaker 1: supposed to be the mortarboard. Uh is uh where the
Speaker 1: readout is? Yeah, so uh it was actually not just
Speaker 1: a calculator, but it was a a learning device. It
Speaker 1: was to teach you how to uh perform mathematical operations.
Speaker 1: And um I was you know, I owned one of these.
Speaker 1: I actually used these to one of these to learn
Speaker 1: how to do basic mathematic operations. And and I have
Speaker 1: fond memories of this device. Um. You know, because I
Speaker 1: was a geek even as a little kid, I was
Speaker 1: a geek, and I found learning to be fun. And
Speaker 1: I've always found learning to be fun, which is coincidentally
Speaker 1: why I love my job here. So I have incidental
Speaker 1: I have, ironically is why I enjoyed In an Atlantis
Speaker 1: more setway, it's ironic that I enjoyed my job, you know,
Speaker 1: um T I I have T I to thank a
Speaker 1: lot for some of these uh devices because they were
Speaker 1: instrumental in my learning process. So the Little Professor was
Speaker 1: definitely one of the ones I owned, and I also
Speaker 1: owned the other one I was going to talk about
Speaker 1: that was introduced in nine. Development had been going on
Speaker 1: for several years before that. When seventy eight it hit
Speaker 1: the market, and it was the Speaking Spell and spin
Speaker 1: Spell also was very important in uh the documentary film
Speaker 1: Toy Story Um, as I recall, also can give you
Speaker 1: an idea when you need to phone home. Yes, also
Speaker 1: important in the documentary e T The Extraterrestrial Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is part of the idea program. Yeah. And it
Speaker 1: had the synthetic speech incorporated into it, where the the
Speaker 1: toy would say something and you would be asked to
Speaker 1: spell it. And it was a way of learning how
Speaker 1: to read and to spell. And uh, I remember having
Speaker 1: one of these, and I actually I think a couple
Speaker 1: of kids in my neighborhood had them. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed using one of these as well. I mean again,
Speaker 1: thank you t I. And in fact, the next product
Speaker 1: I have to talk about I own that too. Would
Speaker 1: this be the T Stroke four? Yes, actually be slash
Speaker 1: for a for me but uh, which technically didn't come
Speaker 1: out until nine. T I decided to enter the uh
Speaker 1: personal computing market, and at that point there were very
Speaker 1: few other personal computers on the market. Is the earliest
Speaker 1: days of the personal computer age. Yeah, you could have
Speaker 1: seen one of these if you were at CS in
Speaker 1: June nine nine. Of course, I was only eight years
Speaker 1: old at that point, so yeah, I was I was
Speaker 1: busy awaiting. I was I was. I couldn't go because
Speaker 1: I was spending all my time eagerly awaiting the Empire
Speaker 1: strikes back, which wouldn't come out until Um there was
Speaker 1: only fifty dollars. Yes, that was one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why we had the T I T I N N
Speaker 1: slash four A because that one was slashed to five dollars.
Speaker 1: But the this was a This was a computer which
Speaker 1: probably doesn't really resemble the way we think of computers
Speaker 1: right now. Um, if you were to buy just the
Speaker 1: very basic set, like if you if you had just
Speaker 1: the base unit, it was a It looked like a
Speaker 1: keyboard that on the right hand side had a big
Speaker 1: cartridge slot that was in there, and you would slide
Speaker 1: the cartridges in horizontally, not vertically. They didn't stick out.
Speaker 1: They stuck. They didn't stick up, not right, not like
Speaker 1: an Atari, more like a Nintendo. But there was no
Speaker 1: cover that came down over the cartridge. And uh, you
Speaker 1: would plug this into a monitor or television. We had
Speaker 1: ours plugged into our TV, and uh, this is the
Speaker 1: computer system where I played Hunt the Wumpus. I've talked
Speaker 1: about Hunt the wamp Us a lot. It was. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certain things in your childhood that stick with you,
Speaker 1: and Hunt the Wumpus stuck with me. I was terrible
Speaker 1: at that game. I hated it, but I played it
Speaker 1: a lot because it's what I owned. So anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: the Texas Instrument computer. That's one of those computers that
Speaker 1: you hear a lot of engineers talk about how you
Speaker 1: know they cut their teeth sometimes literally on the Texas instruments. Uh,
Speaker 1: t and um, it's a it was. It was pretty revolutionary.
Speaker 1: It the price tag definitely kind of hurt the sales
Speaker 1: for the first couple of years, which is why t
Speaker 1: I went back and started to make some changes to
Speaker 1: the device and then released the new model at five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except it wasn't all sunshine and roses for this one,
Speaker 1: because there was a manufacturing problem that lead to disastrous
Speaker 1: results for t I. Yeah. And I actually wasn't aware
Speaker 1: of this until I did the research, because I guess
Speaker 1: because I never had a t I ninety nine. But yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently there was a manufacturing problem that could cause people
Speaker 1: under certain circumstances to get an electric shock when using
Speaker 1: the computer, which you know you don't want well, standing
Speaker 1: in a bucket of water is not the ideal situation
Speaker 1: for you to use your computer anyway. Well, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that in this case it was it would take
Speaker 1: a little more than that. It was actually the power
Speaker 1: supply and was it was the power supply sentence I
Speaker 1: didn't have one of these. Was the power supply external
Speaker 1: on this computer? I honestly can't remember. I just curious,
Speaker 1: you know, I honestly do not remember I remember using
Speaker 1: this device, but I remember my memory is firmly of
Speaker 1: me sitting on the floor of a living room with
Speaker 1: this device plugged into a television set and playing Hunt
Speaker 1: the Wampus beyond that can't help you, Yeah, they did,
Speaker 1: um t. I had to recall all these devices and
Speaker 1: send out new ones, so they were off the shelves
Speaker 1: for a while, and that didn't That never helps well,
Speaker 1: especially during this era. You gotta remember Apple is tearing
Speaker 1: it up with the Apple two. The Apple one was
Speaker 1: not a huge commercial success. That was mainly a curiosity
Speaker 1: for hobbyists, and it was sold. Do you remember how
Speaker 1: much the Apple one was sold for six centered in
Speaker 1: sixty six dollars and sixty six cents. So at this point,
Speaker 1: the Apple two is on the market, and that's really
Speaker 1: tearing it up in the in the home market place.
Speaker 1: So t I being off the shelves, it was definitely
Speaker 1: definitely a big blow to the company because they were
Speaker 1: losing ground rapidly to Apple. And then of course later
Speaker 1: on you had the ibm UH compatible computers really taking off,
Speaker 1: and and at that point t I was sort of
Speaker 1: left behind as far as the personal computer age is concerned. Ah,
Speaker 1: so what's next? Well, the next one I have is
Speaker 1: an eight one. The next one you have is an
Speaker 1: eight one? Okay, do you have anything before that? Or
Speaker 1: should I just launch into it? Well, I'm catching up
Speaker 1: on on my notes. Pat Haggarty passed away in um,
Speaker 1: so the the old guard, the people who started the
Speaker 1: company are are starting to us pass on. Um oh,
Speaker 1: well I have I have one in uh? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: in eighty one, the first solar powered calculator launches. Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: the t I seventeen sixty six, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yes indeed, yeah, yeah, I mean I I had a
Speaker 1: Texas Instrument solar power calculators too. It almost sounds like
Speaker 1: when I look back on my childhood that I was
Speaker 1: like a Texas Instrument fanboy without knowing it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you know one thing that's missing from their interactive timeline
Speaker 1: that I think is odd the T I thirty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it isn't showing up, which I think is odd
Speaker 1: that they don't see it as a big deal. We
Speaker 1: had a T I thirty. I wasn't allowed to mess
Speaker 1: with it, um, but yeah they had, uh you know,
Speaker 1: they might want to explain to our listeners. T I
Speaker 1: thirty was, in my opinion, the calculator that kind of
Speaker 1: really made a dent in the marketplace. It was ubiquitous
Speaker 1: for a while there. I think, and and derivations of
Speaker 1: the T I thirty. We have a couple around my
Speaker 1: house now which are later model, you know, more sophisticated
Speaker 1: solar powered this thing um that had the the red
Speaker 1: l e eds for the display. So it's not you know,
Speaker 1: I think of calculators today as having you know, l
Speaker 1: c D black and white displays. Of course, people should
Speaker 1: know smart would eventually evolve into cylons, right, I thought
Speaker 1: those were toasters? Well it was. It was actually a terrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: uh tragic love story between a T I thirty and
Speaker 1: a toaster. Okay, all right then, so moving on. You
Speaker 1: said you had something from two Yes, as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I did. In two Uh, Jack Kilby was
Speaker 1: inaugurated Inventors All of Fame. I'm telling you it was
Speaker 1: a big deal. Like I said it it were. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to make what's a joke because he's continuing
Speaker 1: continuously getting honors. Doesn't do push ups, he pushes the
Speaker 1: earth down. It was a big deal. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: at this point, integrated circuits are in so many different
Speaker 1: kinds of things, from inventions all around the world, from
Speaker 1: from companies all around the world. He revolutional, revolutionalized, revolutionized electronics.
Speaker 1: So I just basics of computing and electronic It's a
Speaker 1: running gag in this episode, but I really it's amazing
Speaker 1: and he is being honored by people of all stripes
Speaker 1: of engineering and electronics, so that is a positive thing.
Speaker 1: So I really don't mean to make collided this. So
Speaker 1: the next thing I have is actually the the date
Speaker 1: of October. This is when t I officially announced it
Speaker 1: with with withdrawing from the home computer market. And so
Speaker 1: it looks like once once it's all said and done,
Speaker 1: it looked like t I lost over half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars due to the t I problems um which included
Speaker 1: all the different various uh drains on the their income.
Speaker 1: So that was that was a pretty spectacular failure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I would I would argue that it
Speaker 1: was one of those failures, it wasn't ultimately a failure.
Speaker 1: Well and certainly, like I said, there's so many computer
Speaker 1: scientists out there who will talk about owning a t
Speaker 1: I as well as their first machine and how that
Speaker 1: really got them into computing. So in a way, even
Speaker 1: though financially it was it was not a success. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was one of the most influential pieces of consumer
Speaker 1: hardware to hit the market. Yeah, I mean it just
Speaker 1: without that, we might not have had some of the
Speaker 1: great computer scientists who have come out since then who
Speaker 1: have really kind of shaped the way we use computers,
Speaker 1: things like everything from the way computers network to the
Speaker 1: sounds computers make. I mean, there's some pretty spectacular stories
Speaker 1: that come out of people who credit the TIN with
Speaker 1: their interest in the field. So my next date is
Speaker 1: six when Jack Kilby got the I E. E. Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor. And let's see, there are some pretty big
Speaker 1: things that happened. I mean a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that happened to t I in the nine eighties or
Speaker 1: sort of behind the scenes for most of us, things
Speaker 1: like stock splits and you know, moving branching out and
Speaker 1: establishing branches around the world. Um, it did in get
Speaker 1: rid of its interest in g S. I just an
Speaker 1: interesting note the dow physical origins of the company. Now
Speaker 1: you know, the company is letting go of that, yep. Um.
Speaker 1: And let's see. So we're moving into the nineties, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at this point, you know, the consumer technology is
Speaker 1: starting to wind down a little bit. They still make
Speaker 1: plenty of calculators. Um. Sorry, I was gonna stay. In
Speaker 1: the late eighties and nineties, they had those really awesome
Speaker 1: graphing calculators which were huge and extremely I mean huge. Listen,
Speaker 1: this was a big deal. Uh. And in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: I was in high school when I was starting to
Speaker 1: take physics and chemistry and and calculus, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I was really jealous of all these people who had
Speaker 1: these graphic calculators. Of course, at that point we weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to use them because you know that cheating things
Speaker 1: like the t I eight one now you have to
Speaker 1: have them. Yeah, yeah, these were these were big deals.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember seeing them too. I think I
Speaker 1: actually did have a graphing calculator at one point. We
Speaker 1: did have to have one, and that was a big
Speaker 1: deal because they were they were they were not the
Speaker 1: cheapest electronics out there on the market. They were expensive,
Speaker 1: but you know, they were very sophisticated, especially again for
Speaker 1: their time. UM. So, yeah, most of t i's consumer
Speaker 1: products at this point are really in the educational field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of them certainly are, at least the stuff
Speaker 1: that people actually see. UM. Again, they're they're doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of things in the in the background. UM. They
Speaker 1: got rid of their Unix business, in their UM industrial systems,
Speaker 1: in they actually got out of a lot of business
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Basically, they're finding that they all the
Speaker 1: things that they were working on over the years, they
Speaker 1: just weren't working out for them anymore. They just sort
Speaker 1: of gradually sloughed off. They felt that it was pulling
Speaker 1: focus from their core competencies. Yeah, Jack killb won the
Speaker 1: Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology UM and Eric Johnson inten
Speaker 1: passed on. Uh. That was when t I launched t
Speaker 1: I dot Com. So they were and that was again
Speaker 1: that was kind of early for the Internet days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you think that the Worldwide Web really didn't start
Speaker 1: until about nine two. The Internet, the Internet had been
Speaker 1: around for a while, but the the ability for the
Speaker 1: average person to access the Internet in any way beyond
Speaker 1: email or other like basic Internet commands, um, that was
Speaker 1: really limited until until the World Wide Web. Uh. And
Speaker 1: ninety six, they got rid of their printer business and
Speaker 1: ven they got rid of a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: They got out of this, the defense business. Uh, they
Speaker 1: got rid of software, um, telecommunications, just all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff that they said, you know what this We're going
Speaker 1: to focus on the other things and that's not part
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, And they continued to do that over
Speaker 1: the next couple of years. They were acquiring some companies
Speaker 1: and then they were divesting themselves of others. Well, they
Speaker 1: got rid of got rid of their electronic to business,
Speaker 1: uh Tiger Electronic spot that so um, you know these
Speaker 1: are It's funny because I think of t I in
Speaker 1: those nineteen eighties terms, because that's really when I became
Speaker 1: aware of them. Uh. My father actually, as an electronic
Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, mechanical engineer, worked with some of t
Speaker 1: I's programmable calculators UM, and I actually there are a
Speaker 1: couple of units, uh that he had that are still
Speaker 1: around my my dad's house. Who that you actually had
Speaker 1: to pull out a section of the calculator and snap
Speaker 1: in a cartridge and then you could lock it down
Speaker 1: with a key to this ginormous printer and the work
Speaker 1: you would do would print out on a piece on
Speaker 1: a roll of tape, very much like a um UM
Speaker 1: cash register might um. And then, you know, this was
Speaker 1: back in the the late nineteen eighties, so they were
Speaker 1: still you know, pretty involved in these other things, but
Speaker 1: these are not things that people would buy and have
Speaker 1: in their homes. These are things that you would have
Speaker 1: for business. And then in the late nineties and early
Speaker 1: two thousand era, they started to experiment with various censor
Speaker 1: and control divisions, some of which they acquired only to
Speaker 1: to sell off later. It was again it's kind of
Speaker 1: like this, uh, this era of them testing out the
Speaker 1: other parts of the other other industry interests to see
Speaker 1: if that would be a good investment for the company.
Speaker 1: And then some of them they kept, and some of
Speaker 1: them they realized were uh not really aligned with the
Speaker 1: company vision. They did ship their twenty million graphics calculator
Speaker 1: graphing calculator in two thousand. Yeah, you know, why don't
Speaker 1: you talk about what happened to Kilby in two thousand
Speaker 1: and that was just a really small prize, the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize in physics. He got that in two thousands. Ye. So,
Speaker 1: and Mr Kilby is well well, uh known for his
Speaker 1: pioneering work in integrated circuits. Just amazing how how much
Speaker 1: the world hasn't raced you know, his work. Uh. In
Speaker 1: two thousand three, Cecil Green, one of the original founders,
Speaker 1: passes away. So I believe that's all the founders at
Speaker 1: that point. He was a hundred and three or a
Speaker 1: hundred and two and a half. That's when you get
Speaker 1: to that HD go with the halfs, you know, Okay, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're winding up to getting close to the modern
Speaker 1: day now and what Texas Instruments is into. They're still
Speaker 1: very much involved in semiconductors and transistors. I didn't I
Speaker 1: didn't even meant we haven't really even gotten into the
Speaker 1: digital signal processing stuff. They were in the first three
Speaker 1: calmft S k odems in the mid nineties. Um, there
Speaker 1: a d LP, the digital light processing technology which is
Speaker 1: on many many TV sets. They worked with fujitsu on
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff regarding that and one of Jonathan's
Speaker 1: favorite movies of all times, and my little battery is
Speaker 1: telling me I should shut down my computer. Um uh.
Speaker 1: One of Jonathan's favorite movies, Star Wars episode one, The
Speaker 1: Phantom Menace, showed on DLP was a terrible documentary. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again, uh you know that. Of course that
Speaker 1: movie was heralded as being digital. Oh boy was a
Speaker 1: digital boy, howdy was a digital you know? And they
Speaker 1: used t I technology to show it off in theaters.
Speaker 1: Getting a bad feeling about this, So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're, they're t I has faded from the public
Speaker 1: eye and a lot of areas, Um, there goes the computer,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's still very much active behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: like you're still and and of course if you are
Speaker 1: a student, then you're probably familiar with t I calculators
Speaker 1: because they still are very much the standard for those
Speaker 1: as well. And you're you're very likely to have t
Speaker 1: I chips in uh, pretty much all kinds of technology
Speaker 1: that you may be carrying in your on your person
Speaker 1: at a given time. On the TV, I think t
Speaker 1: I is only second to qual calm for chips and
Speaker 1: mobile handsets. So, uh, there are quite a few handsets
Speaker 1: that use some sort of t I chip. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you look at the breakdown of any electronics device,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you're gonna find at least one
Speaker 1: chip in that device that is going to be branded
Speaker 1: by Texas Instruments. So whereas I think a lot of
Speaker 1: talk in Texas, they really do brand them. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes a very tiny little fire. Yeah. Now I
Speaker 1: think that um, maybe people since they don't see Texas
Speaker 1: Instruments computers anymore, and they don't see you know, there
Speaker 1: were toys and all kinds of things that really got
Speaker 1: a lot of public attention. Uh, you might have thought
Speaker 1: the company is is gone, but absolutely not. They just
Speaker 1: have really returned to their B two B O E
Speaker 1: M roots where they are supplying parts to other people
Speaker 1: who make stuff. And he knows, maybe maybe we'll get
Speaker 1: to a point where it's a full cycle and they'll
Speaker 1: go to just looking for oil. That's entirely possible, and
Speaker 1: it'll start all over again. Well, that that I think
Speaker 1: brings us up to speed, and that wraps up our
Speaker 1: history of Texas Instruments. I was actually really interested in this. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been familiar with the company mainly through
Speaker 1: it's it's consumer products because that was during my childhood.
Speaker 1: So that's that's where I knew the company from. Whereas
Speaker 1: really what they're famous for is revolutionizing the electronics industry.
Speaker 1: So what do I know? Ye oh that So again,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for other companies you'd
Speaker 1: like us to take a close look at and kind
Speaker 1: of give a breakdown of what they've done and what
Speaker 1: it means to be uh, the technology industries as a whole,
Speaker 1: let us know. You can drop us a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or handled. There is text stuff h
Speaker 1: s W or you can send us an email and
Speaker 1: that address is tech stuff at how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and Chris and I will talk to you again
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