retroelectro
Retro Electro: the birth of the microprocessor and Chuck Peddle Written by David Ray, Cyber City Circuits
Figure 1. Chuck Peddle
This is the creation story of the low- cost microprocessor market with the MOS6502. This tale is told from the perspective of Chuck Peddle, a farm boy with ambitions to never work on a farm again. While you do not see his name in lights, chances are the lights you’re using to read this were made possible using several of Peddle’s inventions.
class schedule. He discovered a course taught by a member of Claude Shannon’s team at MIT. The instructor had experienced a nervous breakdown while working for Shannon, and the research was overwhelming him. He was offered a position at the University of Maine to teach a few courses each week while on sabbatical from MIT. The teacher had a unique way of looking at communications theory in this class. He started the class by explaining that before you can learn how to communicate, you first need to know fundamentally how Retro Electro fun fact: Claude Shannon created the foundations of all digital fields of study with his master’s thesis,‘A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits.’ Learn more about Shannon and his participation in the 1956 Dartmouth College Summer Research Project in the Retro Electro Article,‘Programming a Calculator to Form Concepts.’
Living at the dumb end of a shovel Peddle attended the University of Maine in the 1950s. He didn’t go into college with a specific career path in mind, but he understood that taking classes would make him smarter and better prepare him for the job market, so he took a lot of physics and mathematics courses. He didn’t know what he would do after college, but he knew it wouldn’t involve working on a farm. In interviews, he recalls that being at the ‘dumb end of a shovel’ motivated him to pursue a career that provided an intellectual challenge and opportunities for advancement. He feared that if he remained in Maine, working on the farm, that would be all he would ever do.
Early life
Figure 2. CPU 6502
Born in Bangor, Maine, Chuck Peddle grew up as a country boy in a large family with six brothers and sisters. He had to get up early with the animals and work all day just to go to bed and do it again the next day. His upbringing instilled in him a strong work ethic and solid problem-solving skills. One of his first jobs in High School was at the local radio station as a DJ, where he realized that working on the radio, with the vacuum tubes and such, was more fulfilling than talking on the radio. This started a curiosity within him that turned into a drive to learn more. After high school, he joined the United States Marine Corps Reserves, where he served in a few areas, including training in an infantry unit.
EE 21: elements of communication
In an interview, Peddle recounts a time when he had a gap in his
Figure 3. University of Maine: 1958 Course Catalog
we get technical
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