Eric said:
Does anyone have any idea in what years some of the now-common
transistors and diodes were originally introduced? For instance,
1N914
1N4001
1N5817
2N2222
2N3055
2N3904
2N3906
2N4401
That's a good question. In principle all the 1N/2N part numbers were
registered with JEDEC and they ought to have a way of getting to
registration dates. As a practical matter my attempts to navigate the
JEDEC website to find this information in general have failed. They do
say they will sell you the original registration datasheets at 25cents
a page, $10 minimum.
Registration date is not necessarily the same as production date but
shouldn't be too far off.
Joerg's reply seems (to me!) nonsensical because I know all your named
non-plastic parts were well into mass production in the 60's. The date
you read off the top of a data sheet is not necessarily the original
production date because it is entirely possible the data sheet was
re-issued.
My guess as to 2N chronologies, based entirely on some 60's-era TI
"bulletin" dates and done under the assumption that they are at least
somewhat chronological:
2N117 is 1958
2N33x are arealy 1959
2N11xx are early 1962
2N22xx are late 1962
2N30xx are mid 1963
2N32xx are early 1965
2N44xx are mid 1966
Many of those numbers were originally issued by Motorola or Fairchild
but my 60's era Motorola books aren't nearly as complete. I would guess
the Moto sheets have slightly earlier dates. I don't think I've ever
seen much in the way of 60's-era Fairchild databooks.
By the early 70's TI and some others have most of their new parts
outside the JEDEC standard 2N series. At that point plastic packaging
for consumer and non-milspec-non-aerospace stuff really takes off and
the manufacturers start doing their own numbering (often riffing on the
original 2N numbers but not always!)
Just to confuse things even more, the JEDEC web page says they didn't
exist before 1960, so obviously the 2N11x numbers predate JEDEC, but
probably have something to do with EIA. I don't know how RETMA figures
into it.
And in the case of the 1N series I think any assumptions about
sequential assignment of numbers are probably pure BS past the early
60's. Unfortunately my earliest TI diode datasheets mentioning your
part numbers have dates of early 70's on them and those dates cannot be
right for the 1N914.
I did find a 1N4148 TI bulletin dated October 1966, and that might be
too late by only a couple of years
.
The JEDEC website says the 1N3091 was registered in May 1960 and the
1N3595 was 11/5/1962. At that point I'm already very critical of the
thought of sequential assignment.
Tim.
