Consumer Electronics

By the late-twentieth century, TI applied its technologies to consumer produts. It made a hearing aid that relied on integrated circuits in 1964. The company created the first solid-state radar in 1967, making this form of detection cheaper and bringing it to smaller units. In 1978, the single-chip speech synthesizer joined the company’s catalog of consumer electronics. This technology was the backbone of the Speak & Spell, a learning toy that broadened TI’s consumer product offerings. Perhaps the most important – and recognizable – invention to develop in TI’s labs was the pocket calculator, which made it easier and cheaper than ever before to execute mathematic functions.

TI revolutionized math in 1967 when it produced the first handheld calculator, code-named Cal-Tech. Note the thermal printhead on the device.

By the 1970s, Texas Instruments had become a leader in educational consumer electronics. This assortment of games appears in the late-1970s, and includes the Speak & Spell Compact and Little Professor, a learning aid.

When Texas Instruments debuted the Speak & Spell in 1978, it brought the first speech synthesis device to the market. In 2002, the development team behind this revolutionary product reunited as shown in this photograph. They are, from left to right, Gene Frantz, Paul Breedlove, Richard Wiggins, and Larry Brantingham.

Since the 1990s, Texas Instruments has produced multiple graphic calculators. The first, shown here, was the TI-81, which the company first sold in 1990.

Digital Light Processing is used for projection of images, with applications in communications, entertainment, and security. Developed in 1987 by Larry Hornbeck, a fellow of Texas Instruments, this Digital Micromirror Device earned accolades from multiple sources, including the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This cell phone, shown in 2004, contained a “Hollywood” chip manufactured by TI. This chip could receive digital television signals.