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Oral History – Hans Camenzind
Continued)
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I went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and
underneath the circular white dome, on the 6th and 7th
floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings
of the IRE (Institute of Radio
Engineers). There was no index, no
computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase
locked loop. I had never heard of
it before. I looked at it and it was a very obscure concept, it was used to
lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals
coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.
So, I took this concept with me,
and after I left PR Mallory, I convinced Signetics to work on that. Now, the phase locked loop has the
advantage that it can capture a signal.
You have an oscillator that determines whereabouts it is, (it
doesn’t have to be precise) – if the signal comes close, it will actually
capture it. It will lock on to
it. That was ideal, since I didn’t
need precision. I designed two or
three circuits that became commercial, the first one was the 565, and then
the 566. And for that phase locked
loop, I had to design an oscillator that was insensitive to the large
variation of parameters inside the IC.
So you could set the frequency with a resistor and capacitor – that
was it, and nothing else mattered.
That was done and commercially available when I left Signetics and
became an independent consultant.
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Oral History – Hans Camenzind
(Continued)
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And I used that as the basis
to design the 555 timer. Here you
have an oscillator, that is handy – the customer can choose a resistor and
capacitor to determine the frequency.
And what I wanted to do was not to make just an oscillator, but a
timer – trigger it, it would run for a certain time, then stop it. The marketing manager bought the
concept. There was nothing like it
at the time. You had to use quite a
few discrete components, a comparator, a zener diode or even two. It was
not a simple circuit.
What made this go at Signetics
was the marketing manager, Art Fury.
He was an unusual man in that he had practical experience. He had a
lab at home, with components, and he would actually use a soldering iron
and connect things together. He
worked at General Electric for a long and he knew the market – he had a gut
feel for the market. And he felt
that a timer like that would sell.
No marketing data, no marketing research. He was right, dead right.
It was a huge success.
Go
To Camenzind Oral History,Page 6
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