Great care should be taken when challenging an old journalist. We have our
sources and our methods. Like it has been said, never pick an argument
with folks who buy ink by the barrel. I would add to that warning, beware
of those who bullshit, or used to, for a living. Here, just like on Fox
News, is the truth of the matter:
The engineer who said this was Ray D. Ayetor, who had been assigned to
develop a more wear-resistant material for the ping-pong ball type-head
thingies used in the Selectric typewriters. Kept in the dark regarding
more advanced technology, Ray was unaware of the potential use of the
microchip and mistook it for a part of the keyboard mechanism of the
Selectric. He died in 1977 just two days before winning the Illinois
lottery, much to the relief of his widow, who collected the winnings and
moved to Newark to live with her mother, where she erected a high stone
fence, topped with concertina wire, around their two-bedroom, four-bath
bungalow. She has been a recluse ever since, though it is said she buys
and sells lots of stuff on e-Bay, including some OM gear, doing much of it
in her late husband?s name.
Walt, who lies only when convenient or fun
Message text written by INTERNET:olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
>Ah, but you've hit a sore spot for an IBM retiree. This is someone's
idea of a joke but hardly accurate. In particular, the year is not well
chosen since it was 1968 that IBM introduced MST (Monolithic Systems
Technology) which was IBM's first truly integrated ciruitry where there
were more than a few circuits on a chip. For a photo and text see the
next to last paragraph on this page:
<http://www.thegalleryofoldiron.com/MISC.HTM>
And from the Texas Instruments integrated circuits collection at the
Smithsonian you can see that IBM and TI were working closely together on
manufacturing technology since the early 60's with IBM teaching TI how
to build the stuff. <http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/texas/t_028.htm>
TI and Fairchild are given the honor of having conceived of the
integrated circuit in 1958. But it was another 10 years before anybody
figured out how to build and package this stuff with anything other than
a trivial number of circuits. The Intel 4004 (the first real processor
on a chip) didn't come about until 1971.
Chuck Norcutt
Walt Wayman wrote:
> An IBM engineer in 1968, referring to the microchip: "But what is it good
for?"
<
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