Texas Instruments and the Advancement of Technology

Founded in the 1930's, Texas Instruments has gone from a little company with a big dream to producing radars and missile for the military.  Here is a little timeline to show the evolution of computers in TI.

1952 - TI buys a license to make transistors

1953 - SC Products Division established

1954 - First commercial transistor introduced to public

1959 - First commercial integrated circuits

Single-Chip Microprocessor

1961 - Series 51 ICs produced, Series 52 ICs produced a year later

1964 - Transistor-Transistor Logic ICs instroduced

1968 - First Metal-On-Silicon circuits produced

1969 - Thermocompression bonding process developed

1971 - First single-chip microprocessor produced

          First microcontroller invented

          High and Low power TTL logic family produced

1978 - Single-chip speech synthesizers

          256K bubble memory chips produced

1979 - Solar energy technology developed

1980 - First sonar autofocus technology

1982 - TI-99/4A home computer put into market

         PEB introduced to market

TI-99 4A

1983 - Newer version of TI-99/4A released, featuring a cheaper motherboard and case

1984 - CC-9900 Micro-Expansion System introduced for smaller computers

After 1984, TI decided that it cannot compete in home computers, so they moved on to military grade weaponry, education, space exploration programs and other projects.

Sources: Texas Instruments Official Website, Wikipedia, Old Computers Museum, NASA Official Website