Scraped from an ad: https://snapklik.com/en-ca/product/tinkertoy-30-model-200-piece-super-building-set-preschool-learning-educational-toy- for-girls-and-boys-3/05DL4PL73XTV5 |
I've been assiduously avoiding talking about "Project Tinkertoy" since the Bureau of Standards/Industrial Planning Division, USN/Kaiser Electronics Division, Wilys Motor Company pilot factory in Arlington, Virginia, hit the news, well before September of 1953, where Blogspot search turns up my earliest reference to it. The thing is that Project Tinkertoy's press people are most impressed by the ceramic wafers that the Project Tinkertoy modular components are mounted on, and that is the part of the technology that most obviously has no future. Integrated circuits most definitely do, but that's a story that doesn't really get going until 1957, and apparently we're still one cycle of abortive precursors away from that, with the Army's 1957 Micromodule programme. On the other hand, the actual technology of the integrated circuit has a prehistory which is not well integrated into that of the various abortive precursors. So I'm going to take a rainy laundry day Saturday to look at that!