Obit

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

[I.M. OUTAHEREParticipant @i-m-outahere]

I don't know how many of these i have used over the last 25yrs to make a myriad of timing, flashingand pwm circuits-but it would be in the hundreds and i never bothered to find out who invented it !

He must have been a remarkable person as the 555 in its lifespan has been and still is a versatile little chip.

Ian

[SpringbokParticipant @springbok]

Velly cunning these chapanese.

Actually think it came out of one of the labs at Mas Uni, where the language MUMPS came from and is almost universally used in hospitals at the time and should think still is.. I remember programming in it.. made G Code look simple.
Bob

[Geoff TheasbyParticipant @geofftheasby]

My old boss wouldn't let us use 555 timers in our designs. "Cheap, nasty and crude" he said. Do it digitally! Certainly it depends on a timing capacitor, and they are notoriously inaccurate.

 

Edited By Geoff Theasby on 24/08/2012 12:15:00

[Anonymous]

Posted by Geoff Theasby on 24/08/2012 12:14:41:

My old boss wouldn't let us use 555 timers in our designs. "Cheap, nasty and crude" he said. Do it digitally! Certainly it depends on a timing capacitor, and they are notoriously inaccurate.

Quite right too! The original 555 had a few problems, high current consumption, taking large current pulses during switching, and was prone to double triggering. A lot of these issues were sorted out when the CMOS versions became available, although you need consider capacitor leakage carefully. Even worse are circuits where one 555 triggers another, and so on. Still, the 555 is better than the original TTL monostable, the 74121.

Regards,

Andrew

[Gray62Participant @gray62]

A huge leap forward from some of the military stuff I used to work on with timing and switching circuits based around discrete components (some even had germanium transistors!)

CB

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

An absolute classic; I cut my teeth on these as a teenager (Start Trek Siren from an NE556) and came up with another use for one only a few days ago.

Microcontrollers are great, but 555s are the IC equivalent of wood vs plastic.

Neil

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Oh you youngsters – Digital bah!, Chips without fish bah!,

What was wrong with nice friendly thermionic valves I want to know? You could almost see those little electrons whizzing hither and thither. Nice shapes, friendly glow and gentle heat. Companionable components. ( Except in a hot summer when in amongst racks and racks of thousands of the bloomin' things!!)

Norman

[Anonymous]

Posted by NJH on 25/08/2012 12:10:46:

Oh you youngsters – Digital bah!, Chips without fish bah!,

What was wrong with nice friendly thermionic valves I want to know?

Cheek! I may be a youngster, relatively, but I can still speak valves. I was even taught about valves at college, on the grounds that the lecturer didn't understand these new-fangled transistor things. Here are a couple of pictures of the first working radio I made as a small kid, back in the days when electronics also required substantial metalwork. The radio covered the short waves, and was a superhet, very sophisticated! The top of the radio, showing the valves:

And the bottom, showing the point to point wiring:

Regards.

Andrew

[NJHParticipant @njh]

No Andrew   VALVES!!!

 

AND

 

Norman

Edited By NJH on 26/08/2012 16:15:14

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Sorry – duplicate

Deleted

N

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited By NJH on 26/08/2012 16:14:05

Edited By NJH on 26/08/2012 16:14:46

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Nothing wrong with valves – the entire music industry (at least the bits worth listening to) runs on EL34s…

Neil

Hmm – I type fast like Yoda speaks… Jedi never will I be…

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 26/08/2012 21:58:31

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, quite agree Neil, my Disco amp I built back in the 70's had EL84 output Valves, it was a stereo one and had a bootiful sound.

Regards Nick.

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

Posted by Springbok on 24/08/2012 06:41:52:

Velly cunning these chapanese.

Actually think it came out of one of the labs at Mas Uni, where the language MUMPS came from and is almost universally used in hospitals at the time and should think still is.. I remember programming in it.. made G Code look simple.
Bob

Bob

Yes, the Japanese are clever, but so are the Americans, the Koreans, the French, the Welsh, etc, etc, the Camanzind however was Swiss.

The 555 was not perfect but it was incredibly versatile and easy to use. Its a while (actually 2 years) since I used a 555 in a project, but some of the things I made in the early 70s are still in use.

Ian

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Posted by NJH on 26/08/2012 16:04:33:

No Andrew VALVES!!!

SNIP

AND

Norman

Edited By NJH on 26/08/2012 16:15:14

Hi there, Norman,

I used to travel by train from Walton-on-Thames to school in Woking. The Hackbridge & Hewittic Rectifier Company's factory was just down the road from Walton station and there were often mercury arc rectifiers like the one in your picture suspended on springs inside their open wooden shipping container sitting on a porter's trolley awaiting their train to wherever. When Sam, the porter, wasn't looking, we used to jiggle the trolley to get the rectifier bouncing on its springs and the pool of mercury swilling round the bottom of the bulb.

Later on, I worked at the EMI laboratories at Feltham; I worked in the analogue computer laboratory on what was at one time the largest analogue computer in Europe. A row of 19" racks loaded with operational amplifiers and time division multipliers, all thermionic technology. The three-phase feeder that came up through the floor next to the row of power supply units used to run warm to the touch. That computer was eventually given to Brunel University.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

While in kenya I worked on Marconi E10 and E11 transmitters, the valves were huge and had a 10HP blower motor to cool them. One of my jobs was to overhaul thse blowers after so many hours running

The transmitters themselves were about the size of a small room and had a door to enter with a special grounding pole that you touched to everything. One chap did'nt and it arced to his head and burnt his skull.

One of the blowers came down and as I opened it up, inside was a Puff Adder about a foot long, this was brushed into a box and taken out into the bush.

Clive

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