Texas Instruments Documentation

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Texas Instruments made (mostly) area CCDs using the virtual-phase architecture invented by Jerry Hynecek in their Central Research Lab. Some later devices, designated "Impactron" incorporated a high-voltage shift register that provided electron multiplication. TI made these devices until 2011 when their fab in Aizu-wakamatsu, Japan, was heavily damaged in an earthquake. The CCD line was never restarted.

You may notice that the archive includes a data sheet for the TIVICON silicon vidicon camera tube. Truly, TI made an imaging vacuum tube before it made solid-state sensors.  It was built for an Air Force forward-looking infrared (FLIR) system that flew over the jungles of Vietnam making thermal images of people among the trees. The silicon vidicon looked at a spinning line of infrared LEDs (another TI product) to produce a windshield-wiper-shaped image that was displayed on a video monitor. I ran the lab that tested these tubes and I wrote the data sheet included in the archive to start TI on commercial sales of the tubes. I was gone before TI introduced CCDs but my boss, Frank Skaggs, moved to that program.

Link to the TI folder

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