Artifact Details

Title

Smith patent notebook (#314)

Catalog Number

102723039

Type

Document

Description

This volume contains a detailed typed “Table of Contents” listing for this volume as well as Rice (307) and (429). Most of the book comprises specifications for two computer systems SYMBOL (pp. 19-75) and NIMBLE (pp. 76-123). Other items include an asynchronous 12-bit register with photo of board (pp. 8-10); and ideas on PCB connectors, power distribution and system packaging.

Date

1963-07-30-1965-02-21

Author

Smith, William R.

Biographical Notes

William R. Smith (Ph.D.) joined Fairchild circa mid-1963 from the Electrical Engineering Department, Engineering Experiment Station at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he performed research into tunnel diode logic circuits. A 1966 R&D Lab organization chart identifies him as a member of Technical Staff in the Digital Systems Research Dept reporting to Rex Rice where he was a principal contributor to the architecture for the SYMBOL IIR high-level time-sharing computer system. SYMBOL eliminated extensive machine instructions with hundreds of commands and replaced them with a simpler set of instructions composed in English. This made programming the Symbol IIR fast, simple and efficient. One system was shipped to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University in 1970.

Publisher

Fairchild Semiconductor

Identifying Numbers

Document number 314

Extent

Approximately 107 dated entries over 152 pages.

Dimensions

12 x 10 inches

Patents

The author is named as inventor on 4 U.S patents, including 4 patents assigned to Fairchild:

U.S. patent 3577130, “Means for limiting field length of computed data.” Filed 1969-10-03. Issued 1971-05-04.

U.S. patent 3643225, “Memory control system.” Filed 1969-04-02. Issued 1972-02-01.

U.S. patent 3643227, “Job flow and multiprocessor operation control system.” Filed 1969-09-15. Issued 1972-02-05.

U.S. patent 3647348, “Hardware-oriented paging control system.” Filed 1970-01-19. 1972-03-07.

Category

Notebooks

Collection Title

Fairchild Semiconductor notebooks and technical papers

Publications

The author contributed to the following R&D Technical Reports (TR) and papers in professional publications during his service at Fairchild:

TR146 Logic function usage in a large data processor (1963-12-13).

Seeds, R.B., Smith, W.R. and Nevala, R.D. Integrated complementary transistor nanosecond logic. Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 52, iss. 11 (1964): 1584-1590.

Smith, W. R. and Pohm, A. V. A new approach to resistor-transistor-tunnel-diode nanosecond logic. IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers, vol. EC-11, iss. 5 (1962): 658-664.

Credit

Gift of Texas Instruments Incorporated

Lot Number

X6464.2012