The Intel Chip That Was Never Supposed to Exist
Part That Changed American History
634 views
In 1969, Intel had a problem: one of its memory chips was failing.
But engineer Dov Frohman saw something different. Instead of simply fixing the defect, he realized that the trapped electrical charge causing the failure could become a new way to store information — even when the power was turned off.
That discovery led to the Intel 1702 EPROM, a tiny chip with a quartz window that engineers could erase with ultraviolet light and program again. What began as an accident would help make the microprocessor practical and eventually lead toward EEPROM and modern flash memory.
This is the hidden story of the “broken” Intel chip whose basic idea still echoes inside phones, SSDs, USB drives, and memory cards today.
#Intel #EPROM #Microchips #Semiconductor #TechHistory #FlashMemory #DovFrohman #ComputerHistory
4 Comments
The Intel Chip That Was Never Supposed to Exist
Part That Changed American History
634 views
In 1969, Intel had a problem: one of its memory chips was failing.
But engineer Dov Frohman saw something different. Instead of simply fixing the defect, he realized that the trapped electrical charge causing the failure could become a new way to store information — even when the power was turned off.
That discovery led to the Intel 1702 EPROM, a tiny chip with a quartz window that engineers could erase with ultraviolet light and program again. What began as an accident would help make the microprocessor practical and eventually lead toward EEPROM and modern flash memory.
This is the hidden story of the “broken” Intel chip whose basic idea still echoes inside phones, SSDs, USB drives, and memory cards today.
#Intel #EPROM #Microchips #Semiconductor #TechHistory #FlashMemory #DovFrohman #ComputerHistory
I still have a box full of "New Old Stock" EPROMs of various sizes from the 1990s ... ;-)