Texas Instruments
In 1930, J. Clarence Karcher and Eugene McDermott founded Geophysical Service, an early provider of seismic exploration services to the petroleum industry. In 1939, the company reorganized as Coronado Corp., an oil company with Geophysical Service Inc (GSI), now as a subsidiary. On December 6, 1941, McDermott along with three other GSI employees, J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Green, and H.B. Peacock purchased GSI. During World War II, GSI expanded their services to include electronics for the U.S. Army, Signal Corps, and the U.S. Navy. In 1951, the company changed its name to Texas Instruments, with GSI becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company.
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.