Engineering The World: Stories From The First 75 Years Of Texas Instruments

by Caleb Pirtle III

Book Overview

This volume celebrates the can-do, risk-taking, creative pioneers of Texas Instruments from its inception in the 1930s as a tiny geophysical exploration company working out of the back of a truck in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870745026
• ISBN13: 9780870745027
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ Pr
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 3.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.3" x 1.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Engineering the world

If you have ever worked at TI you know that it was and still is a special company. This book will remind you why you love the company. The history of the founding of the company reminded me how special the culture is. The willingness to take risk and tackle the impossible emerged from the early days in the oil exploration business and thankfully stayed with the company through the years. Buy this book!

Good overview of a leading American enterprise

This handsome volume, lavishly illustrated with photos from Texas Instruments archives, is the culmination of a TI-history project that proceeded spasmodically over many years and which reportedly produced an earlier manuscript that was vetoed by the company's then president. What has finally come forth as "Engineering the World" will surely grace the public spaces of all TI facilities, providing visitors waiting to see TI engineers or interview for jobs an excellent overview of the company's considerable innovations and achievements during its first 75 years (e.g., the transistor radio and the integrated circuit). But the book is not a definitive examination of the interpersonal dynamics among the extremely bright, ambitious, and hardworking men involved. A chronicle such as Gay Talese's saga of the evolution of the New York Times ("The Kingdom and the Power," London, Calder & Boyars, 1971) was not the model for this endeavor. And at this point, with TI's founders and many principal participants gone, such a work is probably not possible. Since, as far as I know, none of those folks was inclined to publish a memoir elaborating on his part in the company's creation and evolution, I assume that journals or diaries may not be available. For more detailed TI nuts and bolts, you might enjoy the story of Cecil Green, a founder of TI and its parent company, Geophysical Service Inc ("Cecil and Ida Green: philanthropists extraordinary," by Robert Shrock, MIT Press, c1989), or the humorous memoir of 37 years at TI by engineer/inventor Ed Millis ("TI, the Transistor, and Me, " Dallas, Ed Millis Books, 2000). Mr. Millis was also a member of the research committee for "Engineering the World."