introduction dates of common transistors and diodes

Eric Smith

That's a good question. In principle all the 1N-2N part numbers were registered with JEDEC and they ought to have a way of getting to registration dates. As a practical matter my attempts to navigate the JEDEC website to find this information in general have failed. They do say they will sell you the original registration datasheets at 25cents a page, $10 minimum.

Registration date is not necessarily the same as production date but shouldn't be too far off.

Joerg's reply seems (to me!) nonsensical because I know all your named non-plastic parts were well into mbutt production in the 60's. The date you read off the top of a data sheet is not necessarily the original production date because it is entirely possible the data sheet was re-issued.

My guess as to 2N chronologies, based entirely on some 60's-era TI "bulletin" dates and done under the buttumption that they are at least somewhat chronological:

2N117 is 1958 2N33x are arealy 1959 2N11xx are early 1962 2N22xx are late 1962 2N30xx are mid 1963 2N32xx are early 1965 2N44xx are mid 1966

Many of those numbers were originally issued by Motorola or Fairchild but my 60's era Motorola books aren't nearly as complete. I would guess the Moto sheets have slightly earlier dates. I don't think I've ever seen much in the way of 60's-era Fairchild databooks.

By the early 70's TI and some others have most of their new parts outside the JEDEC standard 2N series. At that point plastic packaging for consumer and non-milspec-non-aerospace stuff really takes off and the manufacturers start doing their own numbering (often riffing on the original 2N numbers but not always!)

Just to confuse things even more, the JEDEC web page says they didn't exist before 1960, so obviously the 2N11x numbers predate JEDEC, but probably have something to do with EIA. I don't know how RETMA figures into it.

And in the case of the 1N series I think any buttumptions about sequential buttignment of numbers are probably pure BS past the early 60's. Unfortunately my earliest TI diode datasheets mentioning your part numbers have dates of early 70's on them and those dates cannot be right for the 1N914.

I did find a 1N4148 TI bulletin dated October 1966, and that might be too late by only a couple of years :-).

The JEDEC website says the 1N3091 was registered in May 1960 and the 1N3595 was 11-5-1962. At that point I'm already very critical of the thought of sequential buttignment.

Tim.