Eugene McDermott
In 1951, McDermott, along with Cecil Howard Green, Patrick E. Haggerty, and J. Erik Jonsson co-founded Texas Instruments. This was done when the company changed its name to Texas Instruments; GSI becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company. This acknowledged that the company had changed its focus from one primarily devoted to oil exploration to one focused on manufacturing. McDermott was the Chairman of TI from 1951-1957, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Board of Directors from 1957-1964 and Director until his death in 1973. During this period of time, Texas Instruments rose to be one of the world's largest corporations.
Texas Instruments TMS1000
The TMS1000 is a family of microcontroller integrated circuits, introduced by Texas Instruments in 1974. It combined a 4-bit central processor unit, read-only memory (ROM), read/write memory (RAM), and input/output (I/O) lines as a complete "computer on a chip". It was intended for embedded systems in automobiles, appliances, games, and measurement instruments. It was the first high-volume commercial microcontroller. In 1974, parts in this family could be purchased in volume for around $2 each. By 1979 about 26 million parts in this family were sold every year. The TMS 1000 was used in Texas Instruments' own "Speak & Spell" educational toy, and in the electronic game Simon.