At 06:10 PM 07/26/2000, Mark wrote:
>I've really been enjoying it. I think it's really cool to hear about the
>early days of computers and programming. These people that were in the
>industry in those days really broke the ground and set the standards that
>the rest of us take for granted!
>
>Mark
>
>No Penguins were mistreated in the making of this message.
>
>
Since you insist :>)
In the late 60's/early 70's I worked for Teledyne Semiconductor making what
was called a Fettron(ap), which was a FET equivalent of a tube. The
engineer I was technician for, and i, were handed the job of duplicating a
12AX7 for a hush-hush goverment project. The first several attempts were
all rejected by the goverment, but they kept refusing to tell us what the
application was. Finally my engineer had gotten a gutfull of this and
informed the goverment represative we were dealing with that he just could
not give them what they wanted without being able to measure the circuit to
see what was needed. Tha caused us to go through the channels to get top
secret clearances. We were then flown to Seattle where we were taken to a 1
block square 7 story building with several(7, I think) air conditioning
units. It turned out that this was the computer for the Dew Line(radar
scanning of the northern path for missiles). After finally giving them a
working equivalent af a 12AX7 I understand they were able to turn off all
but one of the air conditioning units on the roof because a Fettron had no
filament to heat. Turned out this was cheaper than going to a newer
computer and writing an all new program!
Jim
