
RIP Hans Camenzind, Inventor Of The 555 Timer - microtherion
http://www.retrothing.com/2012/08/rip-hans-camenzind-inventor-of-the-555-timer-chip.html
======
klochner
Apropos of our ongoing patent debate:

    
    
        Interestingly, the design wasn't patented and companies
        like National Semiconductor and Fairchild soon released 
        their own versions. This helped to push the price down and 
        ensured that the chip would become ubiquitous in the decades 
        that followed.

~~~
001sky
_Camenzind went on to have a long and successful career, but none of his
subsequent designs would impact the world like his simple little timer. In
fact, IEEE Spectrum named it one of 25 microchips that shook the world in
their May 2009 issue._

\-- Continued from above. Interesting, note the incentives vs the output.

~~~
jessedhillon
I'm not sure what either of you are attempting to demonstrate with these
excerpts.

I read the fact that he didn't patent the 555 with some disappointment. He had
a successful career, good; and yet, he deserved to capture some of the
marginal product of his labor, not simply to go on to be promoted super-
Executive-Senior-Engineer-Level-XII. In this case, he did later start and sell
a company after he left Signetics, and his reputation from the 555 timer
surely helped him to success in that.

But to my mind not patenting the design clearly made it harder for him to
partake in the _direct_ rewards he deserved for creating such a useful
circuit.

~~~
kderbe
Those excerpts demonstrate that the 555 timer became significant in part
because it was not patented. You could even argue that Camenzind wouldn't have
been eulogized for his invention of the 555 timer if it wasn't for its success
due to widespread copying.

~~~
jessedhillon
That would be a specious and incredibly naive argument. First A (unpatented
invention), then B (success), ergo A causes B -- is that the proposal here?
Wouldn't I just have to show the existence of only one invention which became
popular, despite being patented, to disprove this? (If I didn't reject it on
the grounds that it is fallacious reasoning)

Yes, you could argue that he would not have been eulogized, but you would need
to have a better argument and it would be speculative at best.

Edit: sorry it's late, not trying to be a dick.

~~~
kderbe
No, you're right, it's a specious argument. While digging for data to back it
up, I found this interesting quote from Camenzind:

    
    
        There are no patents on the 555.  Signetics did not
        want to apply for a patent.  You see, the situation
        with patents in Silicon Valley in 1970 was entirely
        different than it is now.  Everybody was stealing
        from everybody else.  I designed the 555 Signetics
        produced it, and six months, or before a year later,
        National had it, Fairchild had it, and nobody paid
        any attention to patents.  The people at Signetics
        told me they didn’t want to apply for a patent,
        because what would happen if they tried to enforce
        that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come
        back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say
        “These are our patents, now let’s see what you’re
        violating”.  It was a house of cards – if you blew
        on it, the whole thing collapsed.[1]
    

That's strong evidence that the lack of patent for the 555 was unrelated to
its particular success, so I admit I was wrong about that. But if Camenzind is
correct in his history, then it sounds like Silicon Valley had a solution 40
years ago to the patent mess: pretend they don't exist!

[1]
[http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/C...](http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/Camenzind/Camenzind_Page9.htm)

~~~
pcamenzind
There was an interesting bit of industrial espionage intrigue around the 555,
a story he told friends and family many times.

As he mentions in his book "Designing Analog Chips" he was at one point stuck
on a design that required 9 pins, and that forced it into a 14 pin package. He
initially submitted this design to Signetics and it was this design that
someone in the company leaked to a competitor.

But the larger package bugged him and he kept at it until he was able to get
it down to 8 pins which allowed an 8-pin package, much preferable over a 14
pin one. The competitors, unaware of the improved design, came out with the
larger 14-pin package and this gave Signetics a significant edge when they
started selling the 555.

------
joe_bleau
Download his book about designing analog ICs:
<http://www.designinganalogchips.com/>

~~~
alister
That's wonderful, thank you.

I recommend Chapter 11 (starting at page 141 in the PDF file) for a detailed
personal account of how he developed the 555 timer chip.

I'm also finding that the first 30 pages of the book is a very readable
introduction to how semiconductors and transistors work -- it's written from
an engineering mindset as opposed to the usual physics point of view.

Direct link to the book:

[http://www.designinganalogchips.com/_count/countdown.pl?desi...](http://www.designinganalogchips.com/_count/countdown.pl?designinganalogchips.pdf)

~~~
eternalban
"Without any noise (or some sort of transient disturbance) no circuit would
oscillate; it would just sit there, precariously balanced."

Did not know. Learn something interesting on HN everyday ... /:

~~~
denzil_correa
Well, true! Someone posted on a video on sound generation using IC 555 [0].
Sweet to the ears!

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzaS1nuL8ck>

------
orangethirty
I have many cherished memories of playing with the 555 timer. It was what
drove me to learn how to hack PICs, and then the Arduino. After that came the
mini2440, and the fun never really stopped. I built the siren described by a
fellow hacker below, annoying my then girlfriend (and now wife) to no end with
it. Then I built some fun strobe lights with LEDs. All for a couple of bucks,
and available at the local Radio Shack. I still have a couple of them laying
around, and some PIC 16F84 too. Fun times.

RIP fellow hacker.

------
hinathan
I feel compelled to point out a clever comment (not my own) on the linked
page:

"127 kOhm * 470 uF silence for the fellow."

i.e. using those values for the external resistor and capacitor would result
in a moment of silence (followed by another and another, I suppose)

~~~
fhars
Resistance times capacity is just time, 127kV/A * 470uAs/V = 59.7s, i.e. one
minute.

------
buro9
From the article this link to an IEEE Spectrum article on 25 Microchips That
Shook The World is a pretty good read:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/25-microc...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/25-microchips-
that-shook-the-world/0)

I was going to submit that but HN dupe check prevents it (it was originally
submitted 1,001 days ago). Unfortunately it also appears that you can not
discuss HN submissions that old, so there is no appropriate place to then
discuss the other chips in that article.

Of particular interest to me is the DMD (Digital Micromirror Device). I had
not really thought about how a digital projector might work, but if I had I
would've said that it would be screen based. I wouldn't have guessed that the
light would be projected at a microchip which would then reflect back only the
pixels to be lit using incredibly small mirrors. And that this would happen so
quick that the light would be sent through a gel of colour and would cycle
through red, green, blue, and that the mirrors would reflect only a given
colour at that moment for the pixel concerned.

~~~
aidenn0
To be fair the DMDs in projectors are a fairly recent innovation. I was
interested in projectors in HS, and at that time all projectors were either
CRT or LCD based. However, DMDs were an "exciting new technology" that had
promises for cinema projection since they could be significantly brighter than
the CRT and LCD projectors of the time. I certainly didn't think they would be
available in home projectors in under a decade like they were (though the
color wheel certainly helped with that)

------
Renaud
So many found memories playing with that 555. It was a bit of magic in a small
cheap package that any kid could use to build cool stuff.

It's amazing that this little chip has managed to stay so popular for so long.

~~~
jrockway
Though it's kind of amazing that microcontrollers are now almost the same
price as a single 555 timer.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I know, right? Someone recently contracted with me to build them a circuit to
prevent accidental triggering of a pushbutton. So I did something where a
double-click of the pushbutton results in a single contact closure output.
Entire design was done in an 8-pin Tiny13 that cost about $0.50 @ qty 10 and
the PC board is barely larger than the switch itself!

Still amazes me that I can buy an entire _computer_ for fifty cents.

~~~
joezydeco
I was boggled by reading Bunnie Huang's diagnosis of some counterfeit SD
cards. The SD card manufacturers have realized it's cheaper to put _an entire
ARM processor_ on each SD card to diagnose and bypass bad blocks of flash
instead of using a very expensive machine to do the testing. Think about that
for a sec.

------
VLM
Love the chip, the guys a hero up there with the also recently departed Bob
Pease and Jim Williams.

I realize this is hacker news and pretty digital heavy, so I do feel the need
to point out that "Incredibly, he created the chip alone, spending a year
designing it by hand as a freelancer." and "His design incorporated 23
transistors, 15 resistors and a pair of diodes." is in the analog EE world not
so much incredible as "probably about typical months design productivity". As
usual in the analog world R+D and "productification stuff" and extensive
testing burned up the other 11 months.

So Pease, Williams, and now Camenzind are gone. Hard to believe Widlar's been
gone 20 years, now he was a guy who packed 2000 years equivalent of wild
heroic living into, unfortunately, only about half a century. Losing a whole
generation of analog arch-wizards. Sad.

~~~
itmag
_Widlar's been gone 20 years, now he was a guy who packed 2000 years
equivalent of wild heroic living_

Never heard of him but now you got me curious. Do tell more.

------
kqr2
Forrest M. Mims' _555 Timer IC Circuits_ really opened the door for me on what
the 555 could do.

[http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Mini-Notebook-Timer-
Circuits...](http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Mini-Notebook-Timer-
Circuits-276-5010/dp/B000MN54A6)

It has since been republished in:

[http://www.amazon.com/Timer-Amp-Optoelectronic-Circuits-
Proj...](http://www.amazon.com/Timer-Amp-Optoelectronic-Circuits-
Projects/dp/0945053290)

------
steam
My first IC - havent felt anywhere close to what I felt when I built my first
'siren' powered by a 555, a potentiometer and a cheap 4 ohms speaker.. RIP
Hans.

------
SpacemanSpiff
The 555 design contest winners (from 4/2011):
[http://www.555contest.com/2011/04/the-555-contest-winners-
an...](http://www.555contest.com/2011/04/the-555-contest-winners-
announcement/)

I especially like the adding machine made from 102 555s:
<http://www.vk2zay.net/article/258>

------
tisme
That's one of the few chips that I still remember the pin-out for decades
later. And a bunch of 74's. I don't know how many of those I consumed but they
were a pretty steady item on the shopping list.

RIP.

------
bilbo0s
The 555 really was cool. I remember being in middle school way back in the day
working with 555's. At that time, I had trouble reading resistance values
without resorting to a color reference chart, but the 555 I knew inside and
out.

When you think about it, a design would have to be 'Uber-Elegant' to have a
middle school kid be able to understand it like that. For the time, I think it
was.

(As an aside, I can remember going ballistic on one of my friends who soldered
one to a board. I would only use them on breadboards because I thought they
were too 'valuable'. LOL! Money in middle school terms!)

I LOVED those 555's. Good times.

~~~
dhimes
When those white breadboards came out that allowed you to wire entire circuits
with no soldering at all it changed my life. Until then we would wire wrap, or
solder to pieces of copper wire used as posts stuck in, erm, breadboard. chips
always went into a socket holder whose leads were then soldered to the
breadboard (or wire-wrapped).

My first was a HeathKit digital electronics course which contained power
supplies, sources of +5/0 V, and leds to read output.

Man, this takes me back...

------
Dylanlacey
Aww man! I missed this when it happened. I can be dismissive of Arduino-based
timing projects, driven in part by cherished memories of making LEDs blink and
speakers chirp annoying through use of a 555.

RIP Hans.

~~~
jrockway
That was my thought too until I realized that an ATtiny costs maybe 50 cents
more than a 555 timer.

~~~
aortega
Using an arduino for a timer is a spectacular waste of resources and very bad
engineering (unless you already need the arduino), you might as well use a
Core i7 to blink a led. The pricing will be about the same, you pay for the
plastic package and shipping. Silicon price is very low.

~~~
jrockway
Isn't having two factories, one to produce a 555 and the other to produce an
ATtiny, the waste of resources? I personally prefer to only have to keep one
chip in stock; the factory-calibrated RC oscillator is more accurate than what
I would build out of discrete components anyway.

(Also, an ATtiny is not an Arduino. The Arduino chips cost like $5, an ATtiny
is 50 cents. ATtinys have much less flash, EEPROM, and ROM. But can still
produce a nice square wave :)

------
LolWolf
Ahh, I remember toying around with a 555, it was kind of amazing, been so
long, though, since the AVRs and other Micro/DSPs became the lead.

------
Stratoscope
Ah, I loved the 555. I used it when it first came out to build blue boxes [1].
Of course, the frequency drifted all over the place and I was constantly
having to retune the things. Even so, it was such a fun and easy chip to work
with.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box>

------
aortega
The first thing you usually do with the 555 is to blink a LED, that's the
universal "hello world" of electronics. Then, you can connect a speaker and do
funny noises. Can't compare it with a PIC or any uC, they are much more
complex devices to operate. When you are 10 year old it blows your mind.

------
GigabyteCoin
(from wikipedia)

"As of 2003, it was estimated that 1 billion (555 timer) units are
manufactured every year."

Wow.

------
sbashyal
555 timer was a milestone in my hacking endeavors. RIP Hans Camenzind.

------
braum
The 555 was my introduction to ICs. It was an amazing little chip and I
remember spending hours upon hours with it and a breadboard.

------
bhz
Not-entirely-related, but, RetroThing is a great site for all of you retro
enthusiasts. They have a lot of actual original content, versus all the
regurgitated stuff on all the other sites. (Not HN news though, this is all
good regurgitated stuff!) ;D

Disclaimer: I'm friends with one of the writers/editors/major contributors(?)
of RetroThing.

------
dmmalam
555 was the first IC I played at school when I was 12. Was always amazed with
how many things you could do with it.

------
denzil_correa
The 555 Timer was one of the fundamental IC's of my deeply rooted electronic
fundamentals even though I am a modern day computer scientist. I remember
using the 555 as a flip flop, a Schmitt trigger and to demonstrate a
Monostable circuit.

RIP Hans - you touched my life!

------
tsotha
Ah, I hated that chip, but I have to admit for the price and flexibility you
pretty much had to have it in your toolbox.

~~~
CamperBob2
What was to hate?

~~~
tsotha
It's basically a hobbyist's tool. If you wanted to make a simple circuit that
would produce a "phaser" noise, it was great. If you were designing something
that needed a stable oscillator you couldn't use a 555 because the oscillating
frequency would vary tremendously with temperature. Same with the length of
the pulse if you used it as a one-shot.

At the company I worked in the late '80s the frustrated management banned its
use altogether after a series of failures in the field were traced to designs
that relied on the 555 to be more stable than it really was.

~~~
CamperBob2
_If you were designing something that needed a stable oscillator you couldn't
use a 555 because the oscillating frequency would vary tremendously with
temperature. Same with the length of the pulse if you used it as a one-shot._

Those are all properties of the capacitors used, primarily, followed by Vcc
stability. The 555 itself is a very long way down the list of Things That Make
Oscillators Drift. Did you try polystyrene or polypropylene capacitors, or NPO
ceramics? Supply pushing was also improved with the 7555 CMOS part, as I
recall.

 _At the company I worked in the late '80s the frustrated management banned
its use altogether after a series of failures in the field were traced to
designs that relied on the 555 to be more stable than it really was._

Sounds enlightened.

~~~
tsotha
>The 555 itself is a very long way down the list of Things That Make
Oscillators Drift.

Well, this is true, but the chip put constraints on the types of circuits you
ended up with.

>Did you try polystyrene or polypropylene capacitors, or NPO ceramics?

Eh, I don't recall, as this was 25 years ago. Probably. We were making one or
two of each product, so the cost of the parts was a rounding error compared to
development and test.

>Sounds enlightened.

They had been burned a few times in a sort of public way. Yeah, it was
overkill. On the other hand by that time you could already buy phase locked
loops on a chip, so there wasn't really a reason to keep using the 555 as an
oscillator unless you were making something that had to use really cheap
parts.

------
latchkey
Oh, that brings back memories... my heathkit flashing led armband soldering
project...

------
rbanffy
Guys... he died in August...

~~~
microtherion
Indeed, but I only came across the obituary today; there seemed to be little
discussion on HN at the time, and the retrothing writeup added some background
to the story that I didn't see in the other obits.

------
gall
This was two months ago.

~~~
3rd3
Nooo, old news, life is too short..

