Founded in 1930 by J. Clarence "Doc" Karcher and Eugene McDermott
Headquarters: Dallas, Texas
Texas Instruments
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Founded in 1930 by J. Clarence "Doc" Karcher and Eugene McDermott |
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The name of the company was later changed to the Coronado Corp., with Geophysical Services a subsidiary. On Dec. 6, 1941, co-founder Eugene McDermott and three other employees purchased GSI from Coronado Corp.; the next day, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and GSI found its sound-wave technology in demand from the military as a way to detect enemy submarines. GSI went on to also develop airborne radar units as well.
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But it was engineer Jack Kilby's invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 that first put TI into the history books. It was the integrated circuit (multiple transistors on a single wafer of silicon, or "chip") that made possible the later development of the personal computer.
In 1967, Kilby, Jerry D. Merryman and James H. Van Tassel designed the world's first hand-held electronic calculator. Later to become an indispensible part of college life, that first calculator could only process six-digit calculations — and give answers up to twelve digits.
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In 1979, Texas Instruments introduced its first personal computer, the TI-99/4, using its own 3MHz TMS9900 processor. It featured 16K of memory, a ROM cartridge slot for loading software, a cassette tape input (also for loading programs and/or data) and joystick ports. Two years later, an improved version, the TI-99/4A, with a full-size keyboard and better graphics.
Both models were interesting in that they featured a 16-bit CPU — then very powerful for a home personal computer — but only an 8-bit bus, which limited the power of the processor.
Easy to use and learn (the operating system, as with Commodore's 8-bit computers, was BASIC), the popular TI-99 nevertheless nearly ruined the company due to poor marketing. Originally priced at about $1,150 (including a color monitor), the TI-99/4 didn't sell as fast as the company hoped, and so the monitor was dropped and the price was progressively lowered to the point that within a couple of years it was selling for about $500 — meaning that many early customers who'd bought on a payment schedule still owed more for their machine than a new one in the showroom window.
In 1983, Texas Instruments dropped production for the TI-99 and concentrated on Microsoft DOS-based computers. Even here, however, Texas Instruments charted its own course, using proprietary hardware not truly compatible with the Intel-based IBM clones. It's business machines ran a version of MS-DOS called TI-DOS; software for MS-DOS wouldn't generally run on TI-DOS machines, but many popular business titles were ported over. TI also made a portable version of their TI-DOS computers.
Today, Texas Instruments remains in the forefront of developing computer technology, with industry-leading digital signal processors used in high-speed networking.
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Ti's world headquarters in Dallas
First hand-held electronic calculator
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