The 555 Has Been Around at Least 30 Years

Eucalyptus, IIRC, for one. (Any Aussies feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

For a Seattlite, studying Los Angeles is like having a time machine that sees the future. In addition to the usual forces of car based growth and development, there's a cadre of political types here who try to imitate whatever the fashion is in So. Cal. (Jeeze, like we can't find our own ways to screw things up...).

Yea, "Water flows up hill towards Money". In addition to McPhee's "Control of Nature", "City of Quartz" and "Ecology of Fear" by Mike Davis are good peeks behind the curtain that show (one viewpoint) of how things are run down there.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

No, that's the fresh water supply system (See John's/Watson's suggestion of "Cadillac Desert" for that story). The storm drains are a whole different empire.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

-- ....( remove the " 6 " to e-mail reply )

------------------- It has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind or centralization of govt, it has to do with unscientfic practices by the public, who wants to pretend that everything untoward in nature should be prevented instead of understood and managed intelligently.

Anyway, Anti-science is and always has been the penchant of the Right!

-Steve

I think that is why it's lasted all these years. It has enough flexibility that you can find other uses for it, and the low cost and availability to make it an easy choice.

I've used a 555 as merely an inverter, because I had it on hand and wanted something that would run off the wide voltage range. Yes, you can get line drivers that would do the same thing, but they weren't at hand.

You can find a specialized device, and it can be the best choice in many cases, but unless you are using it a lot it may not be worth stocking. But more general devices have in its favor that you will keep them on hand.

I think of the LM3909, which came out a few years after the 555. A great novelty, but unless you needed it for it's intended low current/low voltage flasher application, there wasn't anything that some other device wouldn't provide, including the 555. But while people discovered various other uses for the 3909, mostly oscillator applications, they always struck me as people trying to find uses for the device no matter what, rather than stumbling on the use by chance. Maybe this perception is tainted by the fact that I've had 555s around almost since they first arrived on the scene, and only had one or two 3909's in that same period. It seems natural to use the 555 for things beyond timer applications, but seems silly to use the now-defunct 3909.

Michael

The LM3909, known sometimes as "The Miser", was designed by friend Bob Hirschfeld (founder of Lithic Systems, and later a father's rights attorney of ill-repute :) while he was at National.

But, speaking of longevity, how about my 1488/1489? Or My 1530/31 OpAmps which are still being manufactured by Lansdale after 39 years? Or my 1648 VCO, 36 years? Or the 12000 series PLL parts which are process re-works of my 60's designs?

...Jim Thompson

That's a great handle. Did you come by it honestly or are you a Happy Days fan?

In article , snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid mentioned...

Ah-hah. I found the culprit. I used to carry around a pair of those and a couple other line driver chips, I think they were the 75113 and NE529 whereever I went. The line driver boxes used to burn those out whenever there was a power glitch or lightning strike. Wasn't the fault of the chips, the problem was that the line driver boxes didn't have transformer isolation of the line. But we ran 9600 baud data all over the campus with them.

What's different about those compared to a 741, ferinstance?

Do you get any royalties or something for the designs after all these years? I wouldn't think so, but I thought I'd just ask.

current/low

device

various

period.

I had a similar problem with 1488/89's in equipment at an air force base, continually losing them to lightning and surges. Right up until I cleaned up the building earthing and tidied the equipment's comm's wiring (again, particularly the earths)......... :-)

Ken

I used to get these terminals in all the time, with exactly that problem and for exactly that reason. Thse chips weren't socketed in the original manufacture, but I installed sockets to make replacement easier on subsequent visits.

I never did get out to the site, but know that it involved a cable run from one building to another at a local small airport.

Care to elaborate on what you did to fix the problem?

Wasn't that a quote from Mister Roberts" I don't think it was the movie, but TV show. They bring a blond bimbo on board and tell the captain she's a tree expert, she looks at his dying palm tree and says, "I think it dead..." One of those quotes you never forget...

One of my all-time favorite movies. Bought a copy on DVD.

I always identified with the character Ensign Pulver (played by Jack Lemmon).

...Jim Thompson

The only thing like that that I can remember is on Startrek, the original series, Bones says to Kirk, "He's dead, Jim."

Last Wednesday, on Startrek Enterprise, the Enterprise blows up and everyone ends up dead, and then in a time reversal trick, everyone goes back to the beginning, and everyone is okay. Weird. Lotsa action, tho. ;-)

But how do you explain that to a kid?