Plane of core memory

[Curious Marc]

I believe 3 wire memory was first introduced by IBM in their 360 systems, and it was a very large development effort. They would almost certainly have patented their way to do it, but I have not checked.

Marc

 

From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of "cctalk at classiccmp.org" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Reply-To: Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com>, "cctalk at classiccmp.org" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 7:08 PM
To: Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>, <General at ezwind.net>, "cctalk at classiccmp.org" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Plane of core memory

 

On 04/18/2019 03:15 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:

      > From: Jon Elson

 

      > As soon as somebody figured out that you could combine the sense and

      > inhibit wires, everybody immediately went to 3-wire planes.

 

I"m suprised the idea wasn't patented. Or maybe it was, and they made the

license widely available at modest terms?

 

 

I was thinking the same thing, but can't find any references 

to who invented it.  it certainly sounds like the sort of 

thing to get a patent on.

 

Point of interest, my freshman advisor was Bill Papian, who 

was Jay W. Forrester's grad student when he invented 

coincident-current core memory.

 

Jon