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108-451: The D-17B weighed approximately 62 pounds (28 kg), contained 1,521 transistors , 6,282 diodes , 1,116 capacitors , and 5094 resistors . These components were mounted on double copper-clad, engraved, gold-plated, glass fiber laminate circuit boards . There were 75 of these circuit boards and each one was coated with a flexible polyurethane compound for moisture and vibration protection. The high degree of reliability and ruggedness of

216-501: A field-effect transistor , or may have two kinds of charge carriers in bipolar junction transistor devices. Compared with the vacuum tube , transistors are generally smaller and require less power to operate. Certain vacuum tubes have advantages over transistors at very high operating frequencies or high operating voltages, such as Traveling-wave tubes and Gyrotrons . Many types of transistors are made to standardized specifications by multiple manufacturers. The thermionic triode ,

324-457: A gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) and a combined biological instrument. TRW designed and built the following space observatories : The teams developing the following observatories continued their work as part of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems: TRW Systems Group designed and manufactured the Vela series of nuclear detection satellites which monitored the 1963 establishment of

432-532: A p-n-p transistor symbol, the arrow " P oints i N P roudly". However, this does not apply to MOSFET-based transistor symbols as the arrow is typically reversed (i.e. the arrow for the n-p-n points inside). The field-effect transistor , sometimes called a unipolar transistor , uses either electrons (in n-channel FET ) or holes (in p-channel FET ) for conduction. The four terminals of the FET are named source , gate , drain , and body ( substrate ). On most FETs,

540-476: A vacuum tube invented in 1907, enabled amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony . The triode, however, was a fragile device that consumed a substantial amount of power. In 1909, physicist William Eccles discovered the crystal diode oscillator . Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent for a field-effect transistor (FET) in Canada in 1925, intended as a solid-state replacement for

648-425: A 6000 rpm magnetic disk with a storage capacity of 2985 words of which 2728 are addressable. The contents of memory include 20 cold-storage channels of 128 sectors (words) each, a hot-storage channel of 128 sectors, four rapid access loops (U, F, E, H) of 1, 4, 8, and 16 words respectively, four 1-word arithmetic loops (A, L, H, I), and a two 4-word input buffer input loops (V, R). The outputs that can be realized from

756-642: A TRW subsidiary, was a record label active from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Christopher John Boyce was a TRW employee convicted of selling security secrets to the Soviet Union via the Soviet embassy in Mexico City in the mid-1970s. Boyce and his accomplice, Andrew Daulton Lee , were the subjects of the best-selling 1979 Robert Lindsey book The Falcon and the Snowman , and the 1985 film of

864-467: A US$ 5.9 billion hostile bid for TRW. Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems , and General Dynamics contended for the company with Northrop's increased bid of US$ 7.8 billion ultimately being accepted on July 1, 2002. Soon afterward, the automotive assets of LucasVarity and TRW's own automotive group were sold to The Blackstone Group as TRW Automotive . A portion of TRW's Lyndhurst campus was developed as Legacy Village . The headquarters building became home to

972-578: A device had been built. In 1934, inventor Oskar Heil patented a similar device in Europe. From November 17 to December 23, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T 's Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey , performed experiments and observed that when two gold point contacts were applied to a crystal of germanium , a signal was produced with the output power greater than the input. Solid State Physics Group leader William Shockley saw

1080-607: A division of Ramo-Wooldridge Corp., designed and produced the identical payloads for Pioneer 0 , Pioneer 1 and Pioneer 2 . These were intended to orbit and photograph the Moon , but launch vehicle problems prevented this. NASA launched Pioneer 1 as its first spacecraft on 11 October 1958. It set a distance record from Earth, and provided data on the extent of Earth's radiation belts . Pioneer 10 and 11 were nearly identical spacecraft, designed and fabricated by TRW Systems Group. They were optimized for ruggedness since they were

1188-600: A few hundred milliwatts, but power and audio fidelity gradually increased as better transistors became available and amplifier architecture evolved. Modern transistor audio amplifiers of up to a few hundred watts are common and relatively inexpensive. Before transistors were developed, vacuum (electron) tubes (or in the UK "thermionic valves" or just "valves") were the main active components in electronic equipment. The key advantages that have allowed transistors to replace vacuum tubes in most applications are Transistors may have

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1296-425: A field-effect transistor (FET) by trying to modulate the conductivity of a semiconductor, but was unsuccessful, mainly due to problems with the surface states , the dangling bond , and the germanium and copper compound materials. Trying to understand the mysterious reasons behind this failure led them instead to invent the bipolar point-contact and junction transistors . In 1948, the point-contact transistor

1404-414: A former Apple program manager, publicized concerns that the site had not been properly tested since 2015 after receiving an email from Apple notifying employees of forthcoming vapor intrusion testing. An EPA study in 2019 had confirmed the previous remedies effective, but Gjøvik told TechCrunch cracks in the floor were exposing employees to carcinogenic fumes. She filed a whistleblower complaint with

1512-411: A mainframe computer at SAC and performed an independent checkout of the command and control software. The EPP assisted in assigning targets and launch time for the missiles. The MM II missile was deployed with a D-37C disk computer. Autonetics also programmed functional simulators and the code inserter verifier that was used at Wing headquarters to generate and test the flight program codes to go into

1620-516: A mile along Cleveland's Euclid Avenue. It employed over 16,000 workers at the peak of WW II production. As jet aircraft replaced piston-engined aircraft, Thompson Products became a major manufacturer of turbine blades for jet engines. In 1950, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge while working for Hughes Aircraft , led the development of the Falcon radar-guided missile , among other projects. They grew frustrated with Howard Hughes ' management, and formed

1728-755: A mysterious apparent nuclear test now called the Vela incident . First launched in 1970, the company built all twenty-three reconnaissance satellites in the Defense Support Program (DSP), which are the principal components of the Satellite Early Warning System currently used by the United States. These are operated by the Air Force Space Command , and they detect missile or spacecraft launches and nuclear explosions using sensors that detect

1836-412: A particular type, varies depending on the collector current. In the example of a light-switch circuit, as shown, the resistor is chosen to provide enough base current to ensure the transistor is saturated. The base resistor value is calculated from the supply voltage, transistor C-E junction voltage drop, collector current, and amplification factor beta. The common-emitter amplifier is designed so that

1944-467: A silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960. Their team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device. With its high scalability , much lower power consumption, and higher density than bipolar junction transistors,

2052-605: A small change in voltage ( V in ) changes the small current through the base of the transistor whose current amplification combined with the properties of the circuit means that small swings in V in produce large changes in V out . Various configurations of single transistor amplifiers are possible, with some providing current gain, some voltage gain, and some both. From mobile phones to televisions , vast numbers of products include amplifiers for sound reproduction , radio transmission , and signal processing . The first discrete-transistor audio amplifiers barely supplied

2160-440: A type of 3D non-planar multi-gate MOSFET, originated from the research of Digh Hisamoto and his team at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in 1989. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics , many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions. The invention of the first transistor at Bell Labs was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009. Other Milestones include

2268-416: A weaker input signal, acting as an amplifier . It can also be used as an electrically controlled switch , where the amount of current is determined by other circuit elements. There are two types of transistors, with slight differences in how they are used: The top image in this section represents a typical bipolar transistor in a circuit. A charge flows between emitter and collector terminals depending on

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2376-461: A working bipolar NPN junction amplifying germanium transistor. Bell announced the discovery of this new "sandwich" transistor in a press release on July 4, 1951. The first high-frequency transistor was the surface-barrier germanium transistor developed by Philco in 1953, capable of operating at frequencies up to 60 MHz . They were made by etching depressions into an n-type germanium base from both sides with jets of indium(III) sulfate until it

2484-454: Is also found in household cleaners. As a result of pipe and tank degradation, the tanks leaked into the ground, resulting in contaminated soil and groundwater. TCE was later determined to be toxic to humans at high concentrations. In 2013, The Atlantic referred to the site as a "paved-over environmental disaster zone". In the 1980s, the US introduced the federal Superfund program to clean up

2592-634: Is enough. The TRW-6425 design was later bought from Oerlikon -Bührle, it was improved and manufactured as the Oerlikon KBA 25 mm. The Ramo-Wooldridge Corp formed Pacific Semiconductors in June 1954, under the leadership of Harper North who had been head of electronics R+D at Hughes Aircraft Company . The funding for this endeavor from Thompson Products was about ten times their initial investment in Ramo-Wooldridge. The original goal

2700-481: Is not observed in modern devices, for example, at the 65 nm technology node. For low noise at narrow bandwidth , the higher input resistance of the FET is advantageous. FETs are divided into two families: junction FET ( JFET ) and insulated gate FET (IGFET). The IGFET is more commonly known as a metal–oxide–semiconductor FET ( MOSFET ), reflecting its original construction from layers of metal (the gate), oxide (the insulation), and semiconductor. Unlike IGFETs,

2808-495: Is now part of ZF Friedrichshafen . TRW veterans were instrumental in the founding of corporations like SpaceX . In 1953, the company was recruited to lead the development of the United States' first ICBM . Starting with the initial design by Convair , the multi-corporate team launched Atlas in 1957. It flew its full range in 1958 and was then adapted to fly the Mercury astronauts into orbit. TRW also led development of

2916-421: Is often easier and cheaper to use a standard microcontroller and write a computer program to carry out a control function than to design an equivalent mechanical system. A transistor can use a small signal applied between one pair of its terminals to control a much larger signal at another pair of terminals, a property called gain . It can produce a stronger output signal, a voltage or current, proportional to

3024-549: Is the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), the MOSFET was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960. Transistors revolutionized the field of electronics and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios , calculators , computers , and other electronic devices. Most transistors are made from very pure silicon , and some from germanium , but certain other semiconductor materials are sometimes used. A transistor may have only one kind of charge carrier in

3132-516: Is used. Input Output 28 digital lines (output) 12 analog lines (output) 13 pulse lines (output) 25,600 word/s maximum I/O transfer rate Physical characteristics Construction: Software: Reliability: 5.5 years MTBF Checking features: Parity on fill and on character outputs Power, space, weight, and site preparation The word length for this computer Is 27 bits, of which 24 are used In computation. The remaining 3 bits are spare and synchronizing bits. The memory storage capability consists of

3240-745: The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in September 1953, with the financial support of Thompson Products. The detonation of a thermonuclear bomb by the Soviet Union spurred Trevor Gardner to form the Teapot Committee in October 1953. Chaired by John von Neumann , its purpose was to study the development of ballistic missiles , including ICBMs. Ramo and Wooldridge were committee members, and Ramo-Wooldridge Corp. became

3348-541: The Titan missile, which was later adapted to fly the Gemini missions. The company served the U.S. Air Force as systems engineers on all subsequent ICBM development efforts but TRW never produced any missile hardware because of the conflict of interest . In 1960, Congress spurred the formation of the non-profit Aerospace Corporation to provide systems engineering support to the U.S. government but TRW continued to guide

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3456-621: The infrared emissions from these intense sources of heat. During Desert Storm , for example, DSP satellites were able to detect the launches of Iraqi Scud missiles and provide timely warnings to civilians and military forces in Israel and Saudi Arabia . The initial seven Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) were built by TRW to improve communication coverage for the Space Shuttle , International Space Station (ISS), and U.S. military satellites. When first launched in 1983,

3564-399: The surface state barrier that prevented the external electric field from penetrating the material. In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick accidentally grew a layer of silicon dioxide over the silicon wafer, for which they observed surface passivation effects. By 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors;

3672-542: The 20th century's greatest inventions. Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect transistor (FET) in 1926, but it was not possible to construct a working device at that time. The first working device was a point-contact transistor invented in 1947 by physicists John Bardeen , Walter Brattain , and William Shockley at Bell Labs who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievement. The most widely used type of transistor

3780-548: The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. The TRW headquarters building was demolished in 2023. Bill Gates , the founder of Microsoft , says that he got "his first big break" at age fifteen, debugging energy-grid control software for TRW. "It was kind of scary", Gates said, realizing the things the program was going to help operate. "This thing needs to work". TRW Inc. was active in the development of missile systems and spacecraft, notably,

3888-475: The D-17B computer are binary, discrete, single character, phase register status, telemetry, and voltage outputs. Binary outputs are computer generated levels of +1 or −1 available on the binary output lines. Special features of the D-17B computer include flag store, split-word arithmetic, and minimized access timing. Flag store provides the capability of storing the present contents of the accumulator while executing

3996-558: The EPA had not been properly monitoring the site and notififying residents of a possible health issue. The EPA litigated with the responsible parties in order update its notification and testing measures to warn residents about possible exposure as early as possible and keeping people away from any unsafe areas. As of 2016 , the site is owned by GI Partners, an investment company, and has been leased by Apple Inc. since 2015 for research and development as of 2021 . The octagonal glass building

4104-413: The EPA, and geologist Michael Calhoun. In 2014 and 2015, a newly required vapor intrusion test of the surrounding residential area, including homes, apartment buildings, and four schools, showed unacceptable levels of TCE. A 2011 study had revealed TCE caused birth defects and cancer by all pathways of exposure. In 2014, the region's congressional representative Anna Eshoo expressed concerns that

4212-631: The Earth's water cycle in the oceans, lakes, atmosphere, polar ice caps , and vegetation . TRW designed and built the descent engine or (LMDE) for the Apollo lunar lander . Due to the need for a soft landing on the Moon, it was the first throttleable engine for crewed space flight . This, and the requirements for high thrust , low weight , and crushability (in case of landing on a large rock), earned surprising praise from NASA's history pages, considering

4320-618: The ICBM efforts. TRW originated in 1901 with the Cleveland Cap Screw Company , founded by David Kurtz and four other Cleveland residents. Their initial products were bolts with heads electrically welded to the shafts. In 1904, a welder named Charles E. Thompson adapted their process to making automobile engine valves and by 1915, the company was the largest valve producer in the United States . Charles Thompson

4428-501: The JFET gate forms a p–n diode with the channel which lies between the source and drains. Functionally, this makes the n-channel JFET the solid-state equivalent of the vacuum tube triode which, similarly, forms a diode between its grid and cathode . Also, both devices operate in the depletion-mode , they both have a high input impedance, and they both conduct current under the control of an input voltage. TRW Inc. TRW Inc.

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4536-412: The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits, allowing the integration of more than 10,000 transistors in a single IC. Bardeen and Brattain's 1948 inversion layer concept forms the basis of CMOS technology today. The CMOS (complementary MOS ) was invented by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. The first report of a floating-gate MOSFET

4644-604: The Minuteman I ICBM. Programming and numerical system: Number of instructions: 39 types from a 4-bit op code by using five bits of the operand address field for instructions which do not access memory. Execution times in microseconds: (Note: Parallel processing such as two simultaneous single precision operations is permitted without additional execution time.) Clock channel: 345.6 kHz Addressing: Memory: Input/output: Instruction word format: Registers: Construction (arithmetic unit only): transistor-diode logic

4752-607: The Offy engine design with his partner Louis Meyer in 1946 and won the Indianapolis 500 twenty-seven times, more than any other engine design. During the period leading up to World War II , through the end of the Korean war , Thompson Products was a key manufacturer of component parts for aircraft engines, including cylinder valves . The TAPCO plant, owned by the U.S. government but operated by Thompson Products, extended for almost

4860-553: The Operational Targeting Program developed by TRW to execute on an IBM 709 mainframe computer. Sylvania Electronics Systems was selected to develop the first ground-based command and control system using a programmable computer. They developed the software, the message processing and control unit for Wing 6. To support the deployment of the Wing 6 system, TRW, Inc. developed the execution plan program (EPP) from

4968-460: The RW-300 for sales in 1959, one of the first "all-transistor" computers with a power supply that used vacuum tubes . The computer was targeted at industrial control applications, with 1024 analog inputs multiplexed to a 1.9K sample/s 10-bit analog-to-digital converter which was transparent to the programmer. It weighed about 600 lb (270 kg). The real-time operating system

5076-714: The Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates, I.D.E.A. and Texas Instruments of Dallas, Texas, the TR-1 was manufactured in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a near pocket-sized radio with four transistors and one germanium diode. The industrial design was outsourced to the Chicago firm of Painter, Teague and Petertil. It was initially released in one of six colours: black, ivory, mandarin red, cloud grey, mahogany and olive green. Other colours shortly followed. The first production all-transistor car radio

5184-514: The Soviet R-7 missile (1959) at 280,000 kg. The US planners had to choose either to develop solid state guidance systems (which weigh less) or consider the additional cost and time delay of developing larger rockets. Minuteman I D-17B computer specifications Year: 1962 The D17B is a synchronous serial general-purpose digital computer. Manufacturer: Autonetics Division of North American Aviation Applications: Guidance and control of

5292-714: The TDRS satellites were the largest, most sophisticated communications satellites built at the time. The seventh vehicle in the series was ordered as a replacement when TDRS-B was lost in the Challenger accident . Launched in 2002, TRW produced the Aqua spacecraft based on their modular standardized satellite bus . A joint project of the U.S. Global Change Research Program ( NASA ), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency ( JAXA ), and National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil , Aqua delivers 750 Gigabytes per day detailing

5400-415: The air. Jared Blumenfeld, the former EPA director, said that TCE released in the air after the cleanup efforts reduces the concentrations to levels that eliminate health risks. Blumenfeld said that airborne TCE is not ideal, but the cleanup has reduced the toxins by 90% as of 2013 , according to Max Shahbacian, the project's lead at California State Water Resources Control Board before it was transferred to

5508-427: The airborne computer. Transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power . It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics . It is composed of semiconductor material , usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls

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5616-431: The basis of modern digital electronics since the late 20th century, paving the way for the digital age . The US Patent and Trademark Office calls it a "groundbreaking invention that transformed life and culture around the world". Its ability to be mass-produced by a highly automated process ( semiconductor device fabrication ), from relatively basic materials, allows astonishingly low per-transistor costs. MOSFETs are

5724-478: The board of Space Technology Laboratories (STL), the division which continued to support the Air Force ICBM efforts. Other aerospace companies believed TRW's Air Force advisory role granted it unfair access to their technologies and in September 1959, Congress issued a report recommending that STL be converted to a non-profit organization. With nearly half of STL's employees, The Aerospace Corporation

5832-404: The body is connected to the source inside the package, and this will be assumed for the following description. In a FET, the drain-to-source current flows via a conducting channel that connects the source region to the drain region. The conductivity is varied by the electric field that is produced when a voltage is applied between the gate and source terminals, hence the current flowing between

5940-437: The budget cuts, forcing responsible parties to pay for the cleanup. Scott Pruitt, Trump's head of the EPA threatened to cut budgets again for the enforcement. In 2019, the EPA and Philips Semiconductors agreed to a consent decree, with Northrop Grumman as a signatory, to fund the remaining cleanup and monitoring of the site, along with two nearby sites collectively known as the "Triple Site". In March 2021, Ashley Gjøvik ,

6048-579: The cafeteria of Building S. William Shatner had previously filmed at the TRW campus for the Outer Limits episode "Cold Hands, Warm Heart". In the episode, he plays an astronaut for "Project Vulcan". The 1967 sci-fi film Countdown , also filmed at the TRW Space Park. The TRW building is supposedly one of the credit company buildings demolished in the 1999 film Fight Club . This is because at

6156-437: The collector to the emitter. If the voltage difference between the collector and emitter were zero (or near zero), the collector current would be limited only by the load resistance (light bulb) and the supply voltage. This is called saturation because the current is flowing from collector to emitter freely. When saturated, the switch is said to be on . The use of bipolar transistors for switching applications requires biasing

6264-651: The complexity of the lunar missions: "The lunar module descent engine probably was the biggest challenge and the most outstanding technical development of Apollo". This engine was used on Apollo 13 to achieve free return trajectory and make a minor course correction after damage to the Service Module . After the Apollo program Moon landings, the LMDE was further developed into the TRW TR-201 engine. This engine

6372-470: The computer were driven by the strict requirements of the weapons system . High reliability was required of the D-17B. It controlled a key weapon that would have just one chance to execute its mission. Reliability of the D-17B was achieved through the use of solid-state electronics and a relatively simple design. Simpler DRL (diode–resistor) logic was used extensively, while less-reliable DTL (diode–transistor) logic (which provides gain and inversion )

6480-445: The concept of an inversion layer, forms the basis of CMOS and DRAM technology today. In the early years of the semiconductor industry , companies focused on the junction transistor , a relatively bulky device that was difficult to mass-produce , limiting it to several specialized applications. Field-effect transistors (FETs) were theorized as potential alternatives, but researchers could not get them to work properly, largely due to

6588-454: The country's toxic waste sites. The site TRW (now Northrop Grumman) is responsible for is called the ' TRW Microwave site '. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked with TRW to treat the water with ultraviolet light and oxygenation and excavate the contaminated soil. In 1994, a public health study determined that the groundwater was still unacceptably contaminated, which can cause vapor intrusion . The EPA says

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6696-559: The current in the base. Because the base and emitter connections behave like a semiconductor diode, a voltage drop develops between them. The amount of this drop, determined by the transistor's material, is referred to as V BE . (Base Emitter Voltage) Transistors are commonly used in digital circuits as electronic switches which can be either in an "on" or "off" state, both for high-power applications such as switched-mode power supplies and for low-power applications such as logic gates . Important parameters for this application include

6804-456: The current switched, the voltage handled, and the switching speed, characterized by the rise and fall times . In a switching circuit, the goal is to simulate, as near as possible, the ideal switch having the properties of an open circuit when off, the short circuit when on, and an instantaneous transition between the two states. Parameters are chosen such that the "off" output is limited to leakage currents too small to affect connected circuitry,

6912-414: The current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits . Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics , many people consider them one of

7020-460: The drain and source is controlled by the voltage applied between the gate and source. As the gate–source voltage ( V GS ) is increased, the drain–source current ( I DS ) increases exponentially for V GS below threshold, and then at a roughly quadratic rate: ( I DS ∝ ( V GS − V T ) , where V T is the threshold voltage at which drain current begins) in the " space-charge-limited " region above threshold. A quadratic behavior

7128-478: The early development of the U.S. ICBM program under the leadership of the Teapot Committee led by John von Neumann . TRW pioneered systems engineering, creating the ubiquitous N chart and the modern functional flow block diagram . It served as the primary source of systems engineering for the United States Air Force ballistic missile programs. Space Technology Laboratories (STL), then

7236-469: The early stage of American research, TRW was one of the companies involved in the development of automatic guns of the Bushmaster program, where, under the leadership of engineer Eugene Stoner , the author of the famous M16 rifle, a 25 mm automatic cannon was developed under the internal designation TRW model 6425 , an ordinary system with automatic gas venting and locking the barrel with a rotary bolt

7344-411: The first man-made objects to pass through the asteroid belt and Jupiter's radiation belt. Simplicity, redundancy , and use of proven components were essential. As NASA's first all-atomic powered spacecraft, these used plutonium-238 units developed by Teledyne Isotopes . Pioneer 10 carried eleven instruments and Pioneer 11 carried twelve for investigating Jupiter and Saturn , respectively. Data

7452-463: The first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer. After this, J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/ SiO 2 stack and published their results in 1960. Following this research, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng proposed

7560-410: The flight and prelaunch software. This software was programmed in assembly language into a D17 disk computer. TRW provided the guidance equations that Autonetics programmed and was also responsible for the verification of the flight software. When MM I became operational, the flight computer was the only digital computer in the system. The targeting was done at Strategic Air Command (SAC) Headquarters by

7668-454: The following limitations: Transistors are categorized by Hence, a particular transistor may be described as silicon, surface-mount, BJT, NPN, low-power, high-frequency switch . Convenient mnemonic to remember the type of transistor (represented by an electrical symbol ) involves the direction of the arrow. For the BJT , on an n-p-n transistor symbol, the arrow will " N ot P oint i N" . On

7776-450: The idea of a field-effect transistor that used an electric field as a "grid" was not new. Instead, what Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley invented in 1947 was the first point-contact transistor . To acknowledge this accomplishment, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain jointly received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect". Shockley's team initially attempted to build

7884-418: The inventions of the junction transistor in 1948 and the MOSFET in 1959. The MOSFET is by far the most widely used transistor, in applications ranging from computers and electronics to communications technology such as smartphones . It has been considered the most important transistor, possibly the most important invention in electronics, and the device that enabled modern electronics. It has been

7992-591: The lead contractor of the resulting ICBM development effort, reporting to the United States Air Force . With continued backing from Thompson Products, Ramo-Wooldridge diversified into computers and electronic components , founding Pacific Semiconductors in 1954. They also produced scientific spacecraft such as Pioneer 1 . Thompson Products and Ramo-Wooldridge merged in October 1958 to form Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., unofficially known as "TRW". In February 1959, Jimmy Doolittle became chairman of

8100-558: The mechanical encoding from punched metal cards. The first prototype pocket transistor radio was shown by INTERMETALL, a company founded by Herbert Mataré in 1952, at the Internationale Funkausstellung Düsseldorf from August 29 to September 6, 1953. The first production-model pocket transistor radio was the Regency TR-1 , released in October 1954. Produced as a joint venture between

8208-927: The most numerously produced artificial objects in history, with more than 13 sextillion manufactured by 2018. Although several companies each produce over a billion individually packaged (known as discrete ) MOS transistors every year, the vast majority are produced in integrated circuits (also known as ICs , microchips, or simply chips ), along with diodes , resistors , capacitors and other electronic components , to produce complete electronic circuits. A logic gate consists of up to about 20 transistors, whereas an advanced microprocessor , as of 2022, may contain as many as 57 billion MOSFETs. Transistors are often organized into logic gates in microprocessors to perform computation. The transistor's low cost, flexibility and reliability have made it ubiquitous. Transistorized mechatronic circuits have replaced electromechanical devices in controlling appliances and machinery. It

8316-424: The next Instruction. Split-word arithmetic is used in performing arithmetic operations on both halves of a split word at the same time. A split word on the D-17B consists of 11 bits. Minimized access timing is the placing of instructions and data in memory so that they are available with minimum delay from the disk memory. Autonetics was the associate contractor for the Minuteman (MM) guidance system, which included

8424-507: The nuclear Partial Test Ban Treaty . Subsequently, they produced the Advanced Vela series, first launched in 1967, which could detect nuclear air bursts using instruments actually called bhangmeters . It had the first dual-spin attitude control system with the total system momentum controlled to zero. The Vela and Advanced Vela satellites were the first to alert astronomers to the presence of gamma-ray bursts . They also reported

8532-548: The potential in this, and over the next few months worked to greatly expand the knowledge of semiconductors . The term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance . According to Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, Shockley proposed that Bell Labs' first patent for a transistor should be based on the field-effect and that he be named as the inventor. Having unearthed Lilienfeld's patents that went into obscurity years earlier, lawyers at Bell Labs advised against Shockley's proposal because

8640-452: The production of computers and monitors . Thompson Ramo Wooldridge officially became TRW Inc. in July 1965. Free of anti-competitive restrictions short of ICBM hardware, STL was renamed TRW Systems Group that same month. In 1968, the company entered the credit reporting industry by purchasing Credit Data Corporation and renaming it TRW Information Systems and Services Inc. The Credit Data group

8748-405: The resistance of the transistor in the "on" state is too small to affect circuitry, and the transition between the two states is fast enough not to have a detrimental effect. In a grounded-emitter transistor circuit, such as the light-switch circuit shown, as the base voltage rises, the emitter and collector currents rise exponentially. The collector voltage drops because of reduced resistance from

8856-541: The same title. Representatives from Space Technology Laboratories (STL) present their ICBM expertise to Don and Pete in Mad Men season 2 episode " The Jet Set ". The Star Trek: The Original Series season 1 episode " Operation -- Annihilate! " (13 April 1967) was filmed on the then-TRW campus (now Northrop Grumman's Space Park ) in Redondo Beach, California . The two sets of stairs shown are those leading to

8964-495: The site has institutional controls to protect people from contact with affected water. Drinking water in the area comes from Hetch Hetchy and municipal wells. In the 2000s, a bioremediation method developed by Stanford University using bacteria in molasses to naturally breakdown the TCE into harmless sub-compounds was implemented. Other measures included engineering vapor pathways to avoid direct human contact by releasing it into

9072-685: The time the book was written, TRW was in the business of credit reporting. However, there is no TRW building in Delaware , where the demolition purportedly happens. TRW equipment/boxes can be seen stored and being unloaded in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind during scenes filmed at Devils Tower. In the 1960s and 1970s, TRW stored trichloroethylene (TCE), a critical chemical for cooling and degreasing computer chips , in tanks deep underground in Sunnyvale, California for later use. TCE

9180-409: The transistor so that it operates between its cut-off region in the off-state and the saturation region ( on ). This requires sufficient base drive current. As the transistor provides current gain, it facilitates the switching of a relatively large current in the collector by a much smaller current into the base terminal. The ratio of these currents varies depending on the type of transistor, and even for

9288-483: The transistor, the company rushed to get its "transistron" into production for amplified use in France's telephone network, filing his first transistor patent application on August 13, 1948. The first bipolar junction transistors were invented by Bell Labs' William Shockley, who applied for patent (2,569,347) on June 26, 1948. On April 12, 1950, Bell Labs chemists Gordon Teal and Morgan Sparks successfully produced

9396-423: The triode. He filed identical patents in the United States in 1926 and 1928. However, he did not publish any research articles about his devices nor did his patents cite any specific examples of a working prototype. Because the production of high-quality semiconductor materials was still decades away, Lilienfeld's solid-state amplifier ideas would not have found practical use in the 1920s and 1930s, even if such

9504-408: The widespread adoption of transistor radios. Seven million TR-63s were sold worldwide by the mid-1960s. Sony's success with transistor radios led to transistors replacing vacuum tubes as the dominant electronic technology in the late 1950s. The first working silicon transistor was developed at Bell Labs on January 26, 1954, by Morris Tanenbaum . The first production commercial silicon transistor

9612-531: Was 57th on the Fortune 500 list of highest revenue American companies in 1986 and had 122,258 employees in 2000. It operated in 25 countries. On 3 February 1986, the TRW plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania , burned to the ground in an eight-alarm fire . The damage was estimated to be greater than US$ 10 million and was the most serious fire to date in the area. In February 2002, Northrop Grumman launched

9720-525: Was a few ten-thousandths of an inch thick. Indium electroplated into the depressions formed the collector and emitter. AT&T first used transistors in telecommunications equipment in the No. 4A Toll Crossbar Switching System in 1953, for selecting trunk circuits from routing information encoded on translator cards. Its predecessor, the Western Electric No. 3A phototransistor , read

9828-736: Was a wholly owned subsidiary formed to commercialize the integrated circuit technology the company had developed in support of its aerospace business. They produced some of the first commercially available digital signal processing ICs including the TDC1008 multiplier-accumulator . They also made the first 8-bit flash ADC IC, the TDC1007, resulting in an Emmy Award for analog/digital video conversion technology. TRW also pioneered gallium arsenide (GaAs) chip applications for local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) systems, radios, and satellite communications. Bel Canto Stereophonic Recordings,

9936-464: Was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace , electronics , automotive , and credit reporting . It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering . TRW built many spacecraft , including Pioneer 1 , Pioneer 10 , and several space-based observatories . It was #57 on the 1986 Fortune 500 list, and had 122,258 employees. The company

10044-486: Was announced by Texas Instruments in May 1954. This was the work of Gordon Teal , an expert in growing crystals of high purity, who had previously worked at Bell Labs. The basic principle of the field-effect transistor (FET) was first proposed by physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld when he filed a patent for a device similar to MESFET in 1926, and for an insulated-gate field-effect transistor in 1928. The FET concept

10152-576: Was called Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. , after the 1958 merger of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation and Thompson Products. This was later shortened to TRW. The company was founded in 1901 and lasted for just over a century until being acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2002. It spawned a variety of corporations, including Pacific Semiconductors, The Aerospace Corporation , Bunker-Ramo and Experian . Its automotive businesses were sold off by Northrop Grumman as TRW Automotive , which

10260-521: Was developed by Chrysler and Philco corporations and was announced in the April 28, 1955, edition of The Wall Street Journal . Chrysler made the Mopar model 914HR available as an option starting in fall 1955 for its new line of 1956 Chrysler and Imperial cars, which reached dealership showrooms on October 21, 1955. The Sony TR-63, released in 1957, was the first mass-produced transistor radio, leading to

10368-471: Was formed in 1970 to compete with Dun & Bradstreet , from the combination of TRWISS and ESL Incorporated to specialize in technical strategic reconnaissance . TRW Information Systems and Services Division (Credit Data) was spun off in 1996 to form Experian . TRW acquired LucasVarity in 1999, then selling Lucas Diesel Systems to Delphi Automotive and Lucas Aerospace (then called TRW Aeronautical Systems) to Goodrich Corporation . The company

10476-705: Was formed in June 1960. It headed the Atlas conversion for Mercury , Titan conversion for Gemini , and provided ongoing systems engineering support for the government. The Air Force continued its ICBM work with TRW. Dean Wooldridge retired in January 1962 to become a professor at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Simon Ramo became president of the Bunker-Ramo Corporation in January 1964, jointly owned by TRW and Martin Marietta for

10584-918: Was independently invented by physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker while working at the Compagnie des Freins et Signaux Westinghouse , a Westinghouse subsidiary in Paris . Mataré had previous experience in developing crystal rectifiers from silicon and germanium in the German radar effort during World War II . With this knowledge, he began researching the phenomenon of "interference" in 1947. By June 1948, witnessing currents flowing through point-contacts, he produced consistent results using samples of germanium produced by Welker, similar to what Bardeen and Brattain had accomplished earlier in December 1947. Realizing that Bell Labs' scientists had already invented

10692-455: Was later also theorized by engineer Oskar Heil in the 1930s and by William Shockley in the 1940s. In 1945 JFET was patented by Heinrich Welker . Following Shockley's theoretical treatment on JFET in 1952, a working practical JFET was made in 1953 by George C. Dacey and Ian M. Ross . In 1948, Bardeen and Brattain patented the progenitor of MOSFET at Bell Labs, an insulated-gate FET (IGFET) with an inversion layer. Bardeen's patent, and

10800-521: Was made by Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze in 1967. In 1967, Bell Labs researchers Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace developed the self-aligned gate (silicon-gate) MOS transistor, which Fairchild Semiconductor researchers Federico Faggin and Tom Klein used to develop the first silicon-gate MOS integrated circuit . A double-gate MOSFET was first demonstrated in 1984 by Electrotechnical Laboratory researchers Toshihiro Sekigawa and Yutaka Hayashi. The FinFET (fin field-effect transistor),

10908-540: Was named general manager of the company, which became Thompson Products in 1926. Their experimental hollow sodium -cooled valves aided Charles Lindbergh 's solo flight across the Atlantic. In 1937, Thompson Motor Products bought J.A. Drake and Sons (JADSON). The company made high-performance valves that were used in many racing engines of the day, including the Miller Offy . Dale Drake (son of J.A. Drake) bought

11016-559: Was renovated in 2014 and made available for occupancy in 2015. The safety of the site was verified by the EPA. In 2016, the Donald Trump administration cut funding the Superfund program by $ 330 million and EPA funding by more than 30%, resulting in a significant reduction in enforcement and testing. During his presidency, the EPA increased its use of consent decrees, or administrative settlements, to ensure progress continued under

11124-612: Was the electronics industry standard for two decades, was invented by TRW's James L. Buie in 1961. In 1965, engineers Don Nelson and Dick Pick at TRW developed the Generalized Information Retrieval Language and System, for use by the U.S. Army to control the inventory of Cheyenne helicopter parts. This developed into the Pick Database Management System which is still in use as of 2016. TRW LSI Products, Inc.

11232-529: Was to produce the recently invented transistor for commercial sales. In 1957, Howard Sachar and Sanford "Sandy" Barnes invented the Varicap electronic component (also known as the varactor diode) at Pacific Semiconductors. This device reduced the physical size of radio tuners and eliminated the need for moving mechanical parts. This simplified the implementation of remote control TV tuners. Sachar and Barnes were awarded an Emmy in 2007. The company manufactured

11340-573: Was transmitted back to Earth at 8 watts , 128 bytes/s at Jupiter, and 1 byte/s from further out. Pioneer 10 was the first man-made object to pass the planetary orbits and its last telemetry was received in 2002, thirty years after launch. TRW Systems Group designed and built the instrument package which performed the Martian biological experiments , searching for life aboard the two Viking Landers launched in 1975. The 15.5 kg (34 lb) system performed four experiments on Martian soil using

11448-619: Was used in the second stage Delta-P of the Delta launch vehicle for 77 launches between 1972–1988. At the turn of 1964-65, the United States started the ambitious Bushmaster program to create small-caliber assault guns for arming promising infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) of the American Army. The result of this program was the creation of a whole series of automatic cannons with an external automatic drive in caliber from 25 to 40 mm, which received their own general name Bushmaster . At

11556-550: Was used only where needed. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the D-17B was designed, transistors lacked today's reliability. Reliability was also enhanced by the rotating-disk memory with non-destructive readout (NDRO). In actual real-time situations, Minuteman missiles achieved a mean time between failures (MTBF) of over 5.5 years . The Soviets had much larger rockets and could use vacuum tubes in their guidance systems. The Minuteman I, II and III weighed 29,500 kg, 31,746 kg and 35,000 kg respectively, versus

11664-638: Was written by John Neblett, and was the intellectual precursor of the RSX-11 operating system for the PDP-11 . The TRW-130 computer was introduced in 1961, and designated the AN/UYK-1 by the U.S. Navy as part of its pre-GPS TRANSIT (NAVSAT) satellite-based location system . It used Doppler shifts to compute a location in about 15 minutes, and had rounded corners to allow installation in submarines. The Transistor Transistor Logic (TTL) logic gate, which

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