Plus Post: Texas Instruments Personal Consultant Plus
Texas Instruments has what serious expert system developers need. Power tools.
Company
Texas Instruments has a long and zigzagging history. The company was founded in 1930 by John Clarence Karcher and Eugene McDermott. Both men were geophysicists, and the company focused on seismic data for petroleum exploration companies. At the time, the company was named Geophysical Services Inc.
During the Second World War, they contracted with the US Military to provide devices to detect enemy submarines. After the war, the newly created Laboratory and Monitoring division continued to contract with the US Military.
In 1951, the board decided to rename the company to reflect its focus on electronics. They initially picked General Instruments, but a company was already using the name. So they picked Texas Instruments instead.
Shortly afterwards, Texas Instruments started developing the recently created transistor. In 1954, the company produced the first portable transistor radio to demonstrate the technology. The same year, they announced the first silicon transistor. They quickly became a market leader, supplying many transistors to IBM and other big companies.
Texas Instruments followed this by introducing “the silicon-based integrated circuit in 1958”. This was followed by the first portable hand-held calculator and “the first patent on a microprocessor” in 1971. All of this laid the foundation for the forthcoming personal computer industry.
