Interesting to note that the 555, introduced in the same year by Signetics, has the same pnp Darlington structure as the LM339 on its trigger input comparator.

 

With what I know now, the story in #19 probably is incorrect. It could have been Dobkin, as he started at NS just before development would have started.

And another thing -

Am I the only one who thinks that NS did a large disservice to ***20 generations*** of circuit designers by showing pin 11 of the LM324 labeled GND instead of V- ? It's right there on page 1 of the datasheet. They did the same thing with the LM358; I remember the full-page ads in EDN and ED showing the LM358 running on 5 V and GND.

I get that they really wanted to drive home that this part was useful with a single supply and show of their sexy input stage, but come on . . . To this day there is the occasional question on this and other forae about using these parts with dual supplies. Grrrr

ak

 

They work fine with dual supplies -it makes the design simpler than having everything "up in the air" (biased above ground), but yes, their ability to operate from RTL, TTL and typical CMOS power supplies them really stand out.

 

The LM324 and LM358 are noisy and distorted opamps that have trouble producing high output levels above only 2kHz.

 

Yes, totally true but fine for some applications like voltage regulation, heater controls, and motor speed controls.