Texas Instruments was founded by
Cecil H. Green,
J. Erik Jonsson,
Eugene McDermott, and
Patrick E. Haggerty in 1951. McDermott was one of the original founders of
Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI) in 1930. McDermott, Green, and Jonsson were GSI employees who purchased the company in 1941. In November 1945, Patrick Haggerty was hired as general manager of the Laboratory and Manufacturing (L&M) division, which focused on electronic equipment. By 1951, the L&M division, with its defense contracts, was growing faster than GSI's geophysical division. The company was reorganized and initially renamed General Instruments Inc. Because a firm named
General Instrument already existed, the company was renamed Texas Instruments that same year. From 1956 to 1961,
Fred Agnich of Dallas, later a
Republican member of the
Texas House of Representatives, was the Texas Instruments president. Geophysical Service, Inc. became a subsidiary of Texas Instruments. Early in 1988, most of GSI was sold to the
Halliburton Company.
Geophysical Service Incorporated In 1930,
J. Clarence Karcher and
Eugene McDermott founded Geophysical Service, an early provider of
seismic exploration services to the petroleum industry. In 1939, the company reorganized as Coronado Corp, an oil company with Geophysical Service Inc (GSI), now as a subsidiary. On December 6, 1941, McDermott along with three other GSI employees, J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Green, and H. B. Peacock purchased GSI. During World War II, GSI expanded its services to include
electronics for the
U.S. Army,
Army Signal Corps, and
U.S. Navy. In 1951, the company changed its name to Texas Instruments, spun off to build seismographs for oil explorations and with GSI becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company. An early success came for TI-GSI in 1965, when GSI was able (under a
Top Secret government contract) to monitor the
Soviet Union's underground
nuclear weapons
testing under the ocean in
Vela Uniform, a subset of
Project Vela, to verify compliance of the
Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Texas Instruments also continued to manufacture equipment for use in the seismic industry, and GSI continued to provide seismic services. After selling (and repurchasing) GSI, TI finally sold the company to Halliburton in 1988, after which sale GSI ceased to exist as a separate entity.
Semiconductors In early 1952, Texas Instruments purchased a patent license to produce germanium transistors from
Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T, for US$25,000, beginning production by the end of the year. Haggerty brought
Gordon Teal to the company due to his expertise in growing semiconductor crystals while at
Bell Telephone Laboratories. Teal's first assignment was to direct TI's research laboratory. At the end of 1952, Texas Instruments announced that it had expanded to 2,000 employees and $17 million in sales. Among his new hires was
Willis Adcock, who joined TI early in 1953. Adcock, who like Teal was a
physical chemist, began leading a small research group focused on the task of fabricating grown-junction,
silicon, single-crystal, small-signal transistors. Adcock later became the first TI Principal Fellow.
First silicon transistor and integrated circuits " chip, an integrated circuit produced by TI In January 1954,
Morris Tanenbaum at Bell Telephone Laboratories created the first workable silicon transistor. In 1954, Texas Instruments designed and manufactured the first
transistor radio. The
Regency TR-1 used germanium transistors, as silicon transistors were much more expensive at the time. This was an effort by Haggerty to increase market demand for transistors.
Jack Kilby, an employee at TI, invented the
integrated circuit in 1958. Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958 and successfully demonstrated the world's first working integrated circuit on September 12, 1958. Six months later,
Robert Noyce of
Fairchild Semiconductor (who went on to co-found
Intel) independently developed the integrated circuit with integrated interconnect and is also considered an inventor of the integrated circuit. In 1969, Kilby was awarded the National Medal of Science, and in 1982 he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame. Kilby also won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part of the invention of the integrated circuit. Noyce's chip, made at Fairchild, was made of silicon, while Kilby's chip was made of
germanium. In 2008, TI named its new development laboratory "Kilby Labs" after Jack Kilby.
Standard TTL TTL and CMOS logic speech synthesizer electronic calculator, 1976 The
7400 series of
transistor-transistor logic chips, developed by Texas Instruments in the 1960s, popularized the use of integrated circuits in computer logic. The military-grade version of this was the 5400 series.
Microprocessor Texas Instruments invented the hand-held
calculator (a prototype called "
Cal Tech") in 1967 and the single-chip
microcomputer in 1971, was assigned the first patent on a single-chip
microprocessor (invented by Gary Boone) on September 4, 1973. This was disputed by Gilbert Hyatt, formerly of the Micro Computer Company, in August 1990, when he was awarded a patent superseding TI's. This was overturned on June 19, 1996, in favor of TI (note:
Intel is usually given credit with Texas Instruments for the almost-simultaneous invention of the microprocessor).
First speech synthesis chip In 1978, Texas Instruments introduced the first single-chip
linear predictive coding speech synthesizer. In 1976, TI began a feasibility study of memory-intensive applications for bubble memory then being developed. They soon focused on speech applications. This resulted in the development of the TMC0280 one-chip linear predictive coding speech synthesizer, which was the first time a single silicon chip had electronically replicated the human voice. This was used in several TI commercial products beginning with
Speak & Spell, which was introduced at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1978. In 2001, TI left the speech synthesis business, selling it to Sensory Inc. of Santa Clara, California.
Consumer electronics and computers In May 1954, Texas Instruments designed and built a prototype of the world's first
transistor radio, and, through a partnership with Industrial Development Engineering Associates of Indianapolis, Indiana, the 100% solid-state radio was sold to the public beginning in October of that year. In the 1960s, company president Pat Haggerty had a team that included Jack Kilby to work on a handheld calculator project. Kilby and two other colleagues created the Cal-Tech, a three-pound battery-powered calculator that could do basic math and fit six-digit numbers on its display. This 4.25 x 6.15 x 1.75 inch calculator's processor would originate the vast majority of Texas Instruments’ revenue. In 1979, TI entered the
home computer market with the
TI-99/4, a competitor to computers such as the
Apple II,
TRS-80, and the later
Atari 400/800 and
VIC-20. By late 1982, TI was dominating the U.S. home computer market, shipping 5,000 computers a day from its factory in Lubbock. It discontinued the
TI-99/4A (1981), the sequel to the 99/4, in late 1983 amid an intense
price war waged primarily against Commodore. At the 1983 Winter CES, TI showed models 99/2 and the
Compact Computer 40, the latter aimed at professional users. The
TI Professional (1983) ultimately joined the ranks of the many unsuccessful
MS-DOS and
x86-based—but
non-compatible—competitors to the
IBM PC (the founders of
Compaq, an early leader in PC compatibles, all came from TI). The company for years successfully made and sold PC-compatible laptops before withdrawing from the market and selling its product line to
Acer in 1998.
Defense electronics on experimental work in the 1980s fitted with a modified extended nose section. TI entered the
defense electronics market in 1942 with submarine detection equipment, based on the seismic exploration technology previously developed for the oil industry. The division responsible for these products was known at different times as the Laboratory & Manufacturing Division, the Apparatus Division, the Equipment Group, and the Defense Systems & Electronics Group (DSEG). During the early 1980s, TI instituted a quality program which included
Juran training, as well as promoting
statistical process control,
Taguchi methods, and
Design for Six Sigma. In the late 1980s, the company, along with
Eastman Kodak and
Allied Signal, began involvement with
Motorola, institutionalizing Motorola's
Six Sigma methodology. Motorola, which originally developed the Six Sigma methodology, began this work in 1982. In 1992, the DSEG division of Texas Instruments' quality-improvement efforts were rewarded by winning the
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for manufacturing.
Infrared and radar systems TI developed the AAA-4
infrared search and track device in the late 1950s and early 1960s for the
F-4B Phantom for passive scanning of jet-engine emissions, but it possessed limited capabilities and was eliminated on F-4Ds and later models. In 1956, TI began research on
infrared technology that led to several line scanner contracts and with the addition of a second scan mirror the invention of the first
forward-looking infrared (FLIR) in 1963 with production beginning in 1966. In 1972, TI invented the common module FLIR concept, greatly reducing cost and allowing reuse of common components. TI went on to produce side-looking radar systems, the first
terrain-following radar and surveillance radar systems for both the military and FAA. TI demonstrated the first solid-state radar called Molecular Electronics for Radar Applications. In 1976, TI developed a
microwave landing system prototype. In 1984, TI developed the first
inverse synthetic-aperture radar. The first single-chip
gallium arsenide radar module was developed. In 1991, the military microwave integrated circuit program was initiated—a joint effort with Raytheon.
Missiles and laser-guided bombs In 1961, TI won the guidance and control system contract for the defense suppression
AGM-45 Shrike anti-radiation missile. This led later to the prime on the
high-speed antiradiation missile (AGM-88 HARM) development contract in 1974 and production in 1981. In 1964, TI began development of the first laser guidance system for
precision-guided munitions, leading to the
Paveway series of
laser-guided bombs (LGBs). The first LGB was the
BOLT-117. In 1969, TI won the Harpoon (missile) Seeker contract. In 1986, TI won the Army
FGM-148 Javelin fire-and-forget man portable antitank guided missile in a joint venture with
Martin Marietta. In 1991, TI was awarded the contract for the
AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon. In 1988, TI paid the U.S. government $5.2 million "to settle allegations one of its divisions overcharged the government on contracts for guided missiles sold to the
Navy".
Military computers Because of TI's research and development of military temperature-range silicon transistors and integrated circuits (ICs), TI won contracts for the first IC-based computer for the U.S. Air Force in 1961 (molecular electronic computer) and for ICs for the
Minuteman Missile the following year. In 1968, TI developed the data systems for
Mariner Program. In 1991 TI won the F-22 Radar and Computer development contract.
Divestiture to Raytheon As the defense industry consolidated, TI sold its defense business to the
Raytheon Company in 1997 for $2.95 billion.
The Department of Justice required that Raytheon divest the TI
Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) operations after closing the transaction. The TI MMIC business accounted for less than $40 million in 1996 revenues, or roughly 2% of the $1.8 billion in total TI defense revenues, and was sold to
TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc. Raytheon retained its own existing
MMIC capabilities and has the right to license TI's MMIC technology for use in future product applications from TriQuint. Shortly after Raytheon acquired TI DSEG, Raytheon then acquired
Hughes Aircraft from
General Motors. Raytheon then owned TI's
mercury cadmium telluride detector business and
infrared (IR) systems group. In California, it also had Hughes infrared detector and an IR systems business. When again the US government forced Raytheon to divest itself of a duplicate capability, the company kept the TI IR systems business and the Hughes detector business. As a result of these acquisitions, these former arch rivals of TI systems and Hughes detectors work together. Immediately after acquisition, DSEG was known as Raytheon TI Systems (RTIS). It is now fully integrated into Raytheon and this designation no longer exists.
Artificial intelligence TI was active in the area of
artificial intelligence in the 1980s. In addition to ongoing developments in speech and signal processing and recognition, it developed and sold the
Explorer computer family of
Lisp machines. For the Explorer, a special 32-bit Lisp microprocessor was developed, which was used in the Explorer II and the TI MicroExplorer (a Lisp Machine on a
NuBus board for the Apple
Macintosh). AI application software developed by TI for the Explorer included the gate assignment system for Northwest Airlines and United Airlines, described as "an artificial intelligence program that captures the combined experience and knowledge of a half-dozen United operations experts." In software for the PC, it introduced "Personal Consultant", a rule-based
expert system development tool and runtime engine, followed by "Personal Consultant Plus" written in the Lisp-like language from MIT known as
Scheme, and the natural language menu system NLMenu.
Sensors and controls TI was a major
original-equipment manufacturer of
sensor, control, protection, and
RFID products for the automotive, appliance, aircraft, and other industries. The Sensors & Controls division was headquartered in
Attleboro, Massachusetts. By the mid-1980s, industrial computers known as PLC's (programmable logic controllers) were separated from Sensors & Controls as the Industrial Systems Division, which was sold in the early 1990s to Siemens. In 2006,
Bain Capital LLC, a private equity firm, purchased the Sensors & Controls division for $3.0 billion in cash. The RFID portion of the division remained part of TI, transferring to the Application Specific Products business unit of the Semiconductor division, with the newly formed independent company based in Attleboro taking the name Sensata Technologies.
Software In 1997, TI sold its software division, along with its main products such as the
CA Gen, to
Sterling Software, which is now part of
Computer Associates. However, TI still owns small pieces of software, such as the software for calculators such as the
TI InterActive!. TI also creates a significant amount of target software for its digital signal processors, along with host-based tools for creating DSP applications. == Finances ==