cmos introduction

I think I remember seeing CMOS transistors in consumer electronics going back to the late 60's or early 70's. These were also referred to as FET (Field Effect Transistor).

As for CMOS imaging, I don't think I have seen it until about the mid 80's.

The first CMOS devices were very expensive when they first came out.

I don't think you saw any CMOS "transistors" at all. CMOS stands for "Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor"; in other words, it uses devices in pairs, one for pull up, one for pull down. Some early FETs were called "IGFET" for "Insulated Gate Field Effect Transistor"; that could be somewhat equivalent to one part of a CMOS structure.

The huge advantage of CMOS is that one device or the other is always off, so practically no current flows fron Vcc to Ground except during the time a gate is switching. Since the input of the following stage uses insulated gates also, it takes virtually no current to keep it in whatever state is desired.

RCA introduced CMOS gates somewhere around 1966 or '67, under the trade name "COSMOS'. For some time after that, the devices were blindingly slow.

Isaac