Similarly, Margo Selby crafted a very large, vibrant 16m textile installation titled ‘moon landing’ based on the work of Navajo women who wove the integrated computer circuits and memory cores that enabled the 1969 moon landing. Until recently it was on display at Canterbury Cathedral. It is accompanied by a musical composition for strings by Helen Caddick.
Back in the 1980s2H there was a brief fashion trend of woollen knit sweaters with IC mask type patterns. Guessing related to designers playing around with design software and knitting tech made possible by microprocessor revolution.
Early core memories were woven by hand, but IBM rapidly automated the process. (Since most computers from the 1950s to early 1970s used core memory, there was a lot of demand.) However, IBM later found that it was cheaper to have the memories assembled by hand in Asia. For detailed information on core memory, see the book "Memories That Shaped an Industry".
Core rope is different from core memory and much rarer. Core rope is essentially ROM, using much larger cores with wires going through or around a core, storing 192 bits per core. Core ropes were hand-woven (with machine guidance) for the Apollo Guidance Computer.
December/January 1987 I was doing a vacation EE internship in a power station in Australia. Some of the Hitachi mini computers still used core RAM. This was in an all Hitachi Heavy Industries turnkey coal-fired power station commissioned ca. 1985. Pretty sure they had a reference design from boilers and turbines right down to the hardware and software level and kind of cookie cutter stamped out power stations from it. The Hitachi engineering attitude was obviously "If it works, keep doing it the same way for as long as possible". I was told that for some software (firmware?) updates, they'd simply ship out a new core RAM module -- It's non-volatile after all.
What fascinating glimpse at a part of history that I had no clue about. The main reason Navajo (and other nations) native Americans figured in my 'history of the world' so far was the WWII era communications saga.
Marilou Schultz asked me to suggest some chips that would make good weavings, and I suggested the 555, among other chips. She also had questions about the different colors and textures in the chip. She notices a lot more about the colors than I do; I look at a chip in terms of functionality and connectivity and don't pay attention to the colors.
I haven't seen the weaving in person; I think the colors don't come through clearly in the photo. From talking with the weaver, the lavender is apparently in the metal regions.
I went into a lot more of the Navajo history in my previous article [1] so I didn't repeat it in the new article. The quick summary is that the Navajo suffered a century of oppression, were forced off their land in the Long Walk, and had their sheep slaughtered in the 1930s in the Navajo Livestock Reduction. In the 1960s, the Navajo had 65% unemployment, $300 per capita income, and lacked basic infrastructure. Various groups looked to industrialization as a solution, so Fairchild opened an IC manufacturing facility on Navajo land in 1965, employing 1200 Navajo workers and becoming the nation's largest non-government employer of American Indians. The plant was generally considered a success, but in 1975, Fairchild had business problems and laid off 140 Navajo employees. Things went downhill and a radical group, AIM (American Indian Movement), took over the plant with rifles. The armed occupation ended peacefully after a week, but Fairchild closed the plant and moved production to Asia.
Just to be clear since "oppression" is a very broad term: the Navajo (and most other Native American tribes) are victims of genocide. It was a far, far, far more systematic destruction effort than mere marginalization.
Children were stolen, forbidden from learning their native language, killed en masse, food supplies were destroyed, land was continuously taken from them the second anything valuable was discovered on it, etc. etc.
It's really horrific stuff and the effects are still extremely clear on the reservations today.
Delightful crossover: silicon layout turned into textile logic. The 555 is perfect for this—bold pinout, big blocks (comparators + RS latch), and routing that reads from a distance. Add a tiny legend and it’s a great teaching piece.
It's really fortunate that the history of the 555 timer is really well documented. Its inventor, Hans Camenzind, wrote several books, and even had a Youtube channel in his later years[1]. It's a shame that so many iconic chips that have changed the world aren't so well documented. I went down a real rabbithole a while ago trying to find in-depth information about the Hitachi HD44780. I couldn't even decisively pin down exactly what year it was first manufactured. It's interesting to think of microchip designs as a kind of artistic legacy: Chips like the 555 have had an enormous impact on modern history.
That 1981 document says "preliminary", which suggests very limited trial production. Even the 1985 reference I found is "advance". First tape-out may have been earlier than that. Have you tried asking Hitachi (apparently now Renesas) about it? It's more likely that this information is available on the Japanese part of the internet.
The continued popularity of this chip confuses me. I don't understand why it didn't get forgotten decades ago as microcontrollers became common place. Though compared to the Pentium talking on older designs is likely faster to make, so I wonder if he markets himself to an older audience who is nostalgic for these ancient chips.
You may be right about nostalgic reasons, but as a freshman during the emergence of microcontrollers, I've asked the same question to and old professor, in the sense of "why discrete digital electronics is still widely used?".
His response still resonates with me today: a military grade 555 would work in extreme conditions (e.g. heat), would last pretty much forever, would consume virtually no power, and will still cost you a penny.
Sometimes that's exactly what you need. Reliability, durability and cost trumps the power of programmability.
The world would be a much sadder, drearier place without the 555. That's the nostalgia part out of the way.
Really it's such a useful almost universal lego block of a component that it's hard to imagine it going away anytime soon. Sure microcontrollers are as cheap as chips these days, but you get a lot more with them. Do I need to say that sometimes more is less? Can think of scenarios where you absolutely don't want to see a chip containing firmware/code which needs auditing and locking down.
Well even if we assume there's a suitable 8-pin microcontroller which doesn't cost more than the 555, merely loading the firmware onto the microcontroller is going to add significant cost and complexity to the manufacturing stage. Also the microcontroller would be far more sensitive to power supply inadequacies because its state consists of much more than a capacitor and a flipflop.
The original bipolar variant of NE555 is likely to have a lifetime of many decades, if not more than a hundred years, even when operated continuously in harsh environments.
A modern CMOS microcontroller has a much more limited lifetime. Depending on model, you can hope for 10 years or 20 years, but not much more than that because very small MOS transistors and flash memory cells eventually die, unlike the more robust bipolar ICs (whose active regions are buried in the semiconductor crystal, not located at its surface, like in MOS devices).
Back in the day you'd go into an electronics store and there'd be books containing just 555 circuit recipes. Not to mention the magazine articles.
And every EE student back when we tied onions to our belts must have had a lab assignment to spec out a PLL using 555 and bits and bobs and then measure transient responses, temperature stability, etc.
$ChatGPT: The phrase "Where's the uproar over the cultural appropriation :o" was likely a rhetorical or sarcastic question meant to contrast with the actual situation, where no controversy or uproar exists because Marilou Schultz is a member of the Navajo community creating work that authentically represents her culture.
Similarly, Margo Selby crafted a very large, vibrant 16m textile installation titled ‘moon landing’ based on the work of Navajo women who wove the integrated computer circuits and memory cores that enabled the 1969 moon landing. Until recently it was on display at Canterbury Cathedral. It is accompanied by a musical composition for strings by Helen Caddick.
https://www.margoselby.com/pages/moon-landing
Core rope is different from core memory and much rarer. Core rope is essentially ROM, using much larger cores with wires going through or around a core, storing 192 bits per core. Core ropes were hand-woven (with machine guidance) for the Apollo Guidance Computer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-indi...
[1] https://www.righto.com/2024/08/pentium-navajo-fairchild-ship...
Children were stolen, forbidden from learning their native language, killed en masse, food supplies were destroyed, land was continuously taken from them the second anything valuable was discovered on it, etc. etc.
It's really horrific stuff and the effects are still extremely clear on the reservations today.
it appears northam was colonized thousands of years before anybody else even knew, let alone cared for it.
1: https://www.youtube.com/@hcamen
Likely 1985.
https://www.crystalfontz.com/blog/look-back-tech-history-hd4...
It's also referenced in this catalog from 1982: https://bitsavers.org/components/hitachi/_dataBooks/1982_Hit...
Likely the first year of manufacture was 1981/82.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC
His response still resonates with me today: a military grade 555 would work in extreme conditions (e.g. heat), would last pretty much forever, would consume virtually no power, and will still cost you a penny.
Sometimes that's exactly what you need. Reliability, durability and cost trumps the power of programmability.
Really it's such a useful almost universal lego block of a component that it's hard to imagine it going away anytime soon. Sure microcontrollers are as cheap as chips these days, but you get a lot more with them. Do I need to say that sometimes more is less? Can think of scenarios where you absolutely don't want to see a chip containing firmware/code which needs auditing and locking down.
A modern CMOS microcontroller has a much more limited lifetime. Depending on model, you can hope for 10 years or 20 years, but not much more than that because very small MOS transistors and flash memory cells eventually die, unlike the more robust bipolar ICs (whose active regions are buried in the semiconductor crystal, not located at its surface, like in MOS devices).
And every EE student back when we tied onions to our belts must have had a lab assignment to spec out a PLL using 555 and bits and bobs and then measure transient responses, temperature stability, etc.
I have a Displate of a 555 in my little maker corner someone gifted me once: https://eikehein.com/assets/images/makercorner.jpg
Funny how, guided by pure mechanical necessity, pretty stuff can arise.
I've always thought that clockwork, chips and other machines were pretty.
And fractals. ( https://fleen.org/i40.png ) And plants and animals too. And weathered rock.
Which leads me to consider what isn't pretty. Naivety?