retroelectro
Five-five-five: The story of Interdesign Inc. Written by: David Ray, Cyber City Circuits
Figure 1: Hans Camenzind
on the 6th and 7th floor, I spent almost a week looking through old issues of the Proceedings of the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers). There was no index, no computer search, so I had to go through volume after volume. I came across a concept called a phase- locked loop [PLL]. I had never heard of it before. I looked at it, and it was a very obscure concept; it was used to lock on to some faint signal. I think NASA used this to lock on to signals coming back from the moon for the lunar landing.” He began working for P.R. Mallory and Co. in the research and development department after graduation. While there, he developed new ideas and concepts, sharpening his skills in the new Integrated Circuit technology. The problem was that P.R. Mallory made batteries. Their flagship product was named ‘Duracell.’ So, they didn’t care about his fancy and wasteful ideas. He did make some great relationships while there.
designer at a battery manufacturer, he turned his eyes west to Signetics. He packed up his wife and four children and headed for Silicon Valley. While working for Signetics for two years, he was responsible for developing the NE565 and NE567, which were the earliest monolithic PLL chips developed for the market. He also designed the NE566 function generator that was used in developing the growing touch-tone phone technology. 1970: the recession and the rise of Interdesign Inc. In 1970, the nationwide recession was creeping into the components industry, and the bean counters at Signetics downsized the engineering staff by half. Hans was offered a severance package, and he took it. In an interview with Jack Ward of ‘The Transistor Museum,’ he says that he resigned because he wanted the opportunity to study and write a book. During this time, he spent his evenings
Figure 2: Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers - Jan 1934
1960: from Zurich to Boston Most other stories involving the 555 timer ignore the interesting story about how it was only the beginning for a company named Interdesign Inc. Born in 1934, young Hans Camenzind was raised in Zurich, Switzerland. Coming to age at the end of WW2, Hans received an Electrical Engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology before immigrating to the United States in 1960. He and his wife, Pia Camenzind, moved to Massachusetts for Hans to attend Northeastern University to receive a degree in electrical engineering. While a student, he had access to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s libraries and spent much of his time thumbing through journals, books, magazines, etc. It was here that he first found the concept of a ‘phase-locked loop.’ “I went to the MIT library. I had access to this library, and underneath the circular white dome,
Disenchanted by the life of an IC
we get technical
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