Chapter 13. Experiment 13: No Loud Speaking!

The culmination in this series of audio projects is a device that goes back to the concept of using sound to switch something on and off. I showed how this could be done in Experiment 10, but I’m going to take it much further, now. This project was inspired by a story about one of the pioneers of analog integrated circuits.

Background: The Widlar Story

A legendary engineer named Bob Widlar did a lot of the early development work on op-amps during the first semiconductor boom period of the 1960s. He was an important figure at early Silicon Valley startups such as Fairchild and National Semiconductor, where he was memorable not just for his breakthrough designs but for his bad behavior. He had a lifelong ...

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