3 ms·

Why do you refer to them as "hybrid" modules. Seems like a standard transistor logic circuit of the era to me.

• kens 4y ago
  That's what they called modules that were built from active and passive components. As opposed to a "monolithic" integrated circuit.
  • baking 4y ago
    I still think you are using the term anachronistically. The first commercial hybrid integrated circuit was the Type 502 Binary Flip-Flop in March 1960 which was a very different beast. The first commercial monolithic integrated circuit, a NOR gate, didn't appear until 1961.
    • kens 4y ago
      How about "cordwood module" then?
    • adrian_b 4y ago
      Obviously you are right in the sense that the word "hybrid" cannot be used to describe something as being made by 2 techniques, until both techniques exist. So indeed the word "hybrid" could have been used only after the appearance of the first "monolithic" integrated circuits, to distinguish between the 2 types of integrated circuits. I do not remember now if this is true or not, but the term "integrated circuit" could have been used before the first monolithic integrated circuit, to designate such modules assembled from various discrete components, which were then used as components themselves. A few years later, the term "hybrid integrated circuit" began to mean specifically a device made with a substrate, usually ceramic, on which 1 or more dies of monolithic integrated circuits were attached, together with some discrete components, e.g. transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors etc., and all were interconnected using thick-film or thin-film technology, before being packaged for environmental protection. A device made in the same technology, but without any dies of monolithic integrated circuits, would have been named simply as a "thin-film integrated circuit" or "thick-film integrated circuit", as it was not a hybrid. The flip-flop module described here is definitely an "integrated circuit", but it uses none of the more modern interconnection technologies used in the more recent integrated circuits, i.e. it is neither monolithic nor hybrid nor thin-film nor thick-film. During the last decades, most integrated circuits have been monolithic, because that is the cheapest interconnection technology per component device, so now people presume when hearing just "integrated circuit" that it is a monolithic integrated circuit. Such an old integrated circuit, for which none of the later specific terms are applicable, might be called now as a "non-monolithic integrated circuit" or just as a "flip-flop module".
• NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  Technically, a hybrid integrated circuit is just a bunch of individual components that are integrated together into a single package vs a monolithic integrated circuit which is your typical "everything on a chip of silicon".