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@tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org

2026-09-13 18:15 UTC

Ages ago I bought a bunch of NOS Philbrick classic opamp modules from some old guy who had a warehouse at the Oakland airport. A buck each in the box! I gave most of them away, and somehow, not one datasheet survived. Which is terrible because these Philbrick opamp data sheets are THE SINGLE PROTOTYPE for nearly every (American thread) electronic component data sheet from then to date. Every IC datasheet copied the Philbrick sheet verbatim. All I can find in 30 seconds of web search is this shit copy from that annoying radiomuseum page that gateways everything. These things were deeply formative of the modern electronics era. Though made as an assembly of more or less standardized parts (tubes, resistors sockets, etc, custom case) Philbrick treated the GAP/R series as a "black box" -- the black box theory itself being a cybernetic concept conjured up by Brit cyberneticist Ashby. The datasheet describes the op amp as if it were itself a component. This was a totally novel idea in 1960! They had 8-pin octal plugs on the bottom, and the datasheet describes the device's characteristics from that interface. In other words, interoperatiblity, like internet protocols. Doesn't matter what's inside, it is what it does. This was a radical departure at the time and now utterly boring today. Good old George and crew did this.

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