IEEE Award for transister wall clock desing (no ICs used)
T&E Engineer
Posts: 1,396
Has anyone seen this? It's pretty amazing and he's from my company but I don't know him personally.
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Keith Bayern has a passion for retro technology — particularly the transistor, invented in 1947. This passion, made tangible in the form of Bayern's all-transistor clock, resulted in a design award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE).
The clock, which won first prize in the IEEE Spectrum Magazine contest, was constructed using individual components: 194 transistors, 566 diodes, 400 resistors, 87 capacitors and more than 2,700 solder joints.
Today, most devices are designed using integrated circuits (ICs) made of thousands to millions of transistors. "[noparse][[/noparse]I built it] all with transistors, no ICs," said Bayern, a senior principal digital and analog engineer in the Space and Geospatial Intelligence Business Unit. "That was the fun of it."
Bayern's interest in transistors began in the late '70s when his then-manager opened his mind to using transistors instead of integrated circuits.
That mind-opening interaction has resulted in multiple awards for Bayern. He was ranked in the top 15 during the Harris RTX Forth microprocessor contest around 1990 and had another transistor design featured in an Electronic Design News' "best of" issue in the late '80s.
If not for another form of good timing, Bayern's clock might not have made it to the competition. It was hanging in his office, when a co-worker noticed it and told him about the prestigious engineering society's clock design contest.
His most recent transistor design will be featured in an upcoming issue of the IEEE Spectrum Magazine and can also be seen on YouTube (www.youtube.com). Additional details about Bayern's creation can be found on his Transistor Clock (www.transistorclock.com) web site.
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Keith Bayern has a passion for retro technology — particularly the transistor, invented in 1947. This passion, made tangible in the form of Bayern's all-transistor clock, resulted in a design award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE).
The clock, which won first prize in the IEEE Spectrum Magazine contest, was constructed using individual components: 194 transistors, 566 diodes, 400 resistors, 87 capacitors and more than 2,700 solder joints.
Today, most devices are designed using integrated circuits (ICs) made of thousands to millions of transistors. "[noparse][[/noparse]I built it] all with transistors, no ICs," said Bayern, a senior principal digital and analog engineer in the Space and Geospatial Intelligence Business Unit. "That was the fun of it."
Bayern's interest in transistors began in the late '70s when his then-manager opened his mind to using transistors instead of integrated circuits.
That mind-opening interaction has resulted in multiple awards for Bayern. He was ranked in the top 15 during the Harris RTX Forth microprocessor contest around 1990 and had another transistor design featured in an Electronic Design News' "best of" issue in the late '80s.
If not for another form of good timing, Bayern's clock might not have made it to the competition. It was hanging in his office, when a co-worker noticed it and told him about the prestigious engineering society's clock design contest.
His most recent transistor design will be featured in an upcoming issue of the IEEE Spectrum Magazine and can also be seen on YouTube (www.youtube.com). Additional details about Bayern's creation can be found on his Transistor Clock (www.transistorclock.com) web site.
350 x 434 - 49K
Comments
all I have to say is thank God for ICs!
However, with micro-controllers like the SX-28 or Propeller and a RTC, I'm sure this could be done in·a couple of·ICs.