The 2N696 and 2N697 were the first silicon transistors manufactured in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

, in 1958, by

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...

. Fairchild introduced itself to the world via its advertisements for these transistors, which were identical except for a post-manufacturing binning on current gain. The 2N696/2N697 NPN mesa transistor was developed by a team led by

Gordon Moore Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors i ...

. The first batch of 100 was sold to

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

for $150 each () in order to build the computer for the B-70 bomber. More transistors were sold to

Autonetics Autonetics was a division of North American Aviation that produced various avionics but is best known for their inertial navigation systems used in submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its 188-acre facility in Anaheim, California, wi ...

to build the guidance system for the

Minuteman Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Min ...

ballistic missile. The 2N696 and 2N697 were popular devices, quickly copied by several other semiconductor companies, including

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

, Rheem Semiconductor, and others including Hoffman Electronics Corp. and Industro Transistor Corp. In a 1960 advertisement, Fairchild bragged, "The Fairchild 2N696 and 2N697 are the world's most copied transistors. We have now copied them ourselves in scaled down versions. The 2N717 and 2N718 are exactly the same as these popular types but packaged in the

TO-18 In electronics, TO-18 is a designation for a style of transistor metal case. The case is more expensive than the similarly sized plastic TO-92 package. The name is from JEDEC, signifying ''Transistor Outline Package, Case Style 18''. Constructi ...

case. They occupy 1/3 the volume of the standard

TO-5 In electronics, TO-5 (Transistor Outline 5) is a designation for a standardized metal semiconductor package used for transistors and some integrated circuits. The ''TO'' element stands for "transistor outline" and refers to a series of technical ...

, making them ideal for high-density equipment designs."Several electronics-industry magazines carried the Fairchild ad "New Numbers – Same Popular Transistors" in 1960, including: ''Electronics'' vol. 33, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company; ''Semiconductor Products'' vol. 3, Cowan Publishing Corporation; ''Electronic Design'' vol. 8, Hayden Publishing Company.

References

External links

The Transistor Museum
– photo of an original Fairchild 2N697 {{tech-stub History of computing hardware Commercial transistors 1958 introductions