Texas Instruments (nyse: TXN), better known in the electronics industry (and popularly) as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, USA, renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. TI is the No. 3 manufacturer of semiconductors worldwide after Intel and Samsung, and is the top supplier of chips for cellular handsets, as well as the No. 1 producer of digital signal processors (DSPs) and analog semiconductors Fact: date=February 2007. Other focus areas include chips for broadband modems, PC peripherals, digital consumer devices, telecommunication infrastructure, and radio frequency identification (RFID). As of 2006, the company was listed at number 167 on the Fortune 500.

History

Texas Instruments was founded by Cecil H. Green, J. Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott, and Patrick E. Haggerty in 1951. McDermott was one of the original founders of Geophysical Service in 1930. McDermott, Green, and Jonsson were GSI employees who purchased the company in 1941 on the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked. In November, 1945 Patrick Haggerty was hired as general manager of the Laboratory and Manufacturing (L&M) division. By 1951, the L&M division, with its defense contracts, was growing faster than GSI's Geophysical division. The company was reorganized and initially renamed General Instruments Inc. Because there already existed a firm named General Instrument, the company was rechristened Texas Instruments that same year. Geophysical Service Inc. became a subsidiary of Texas Instruments which it remained until early 1988, when most of GSI was sold to the Halliburton Company.

Geophysical Service Incorporated

Texas Instruments can trace it roots back to 1930 when Dr. J. Clarence Karcher and Eugene McDermott founded Geophysical Service, a pioneering provider of seismic exploration services to the petroleum industry. In 1939 the company reorganized as Coronado Corp., an oil company with Geophysical Service Inc (GSI), now as a subsidiary. On December 6, 1941, McDermott along with three other GSI employees, J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Green, and H.B. Peacock purchased GSI, During World War II, GSI built electronics for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the U.S. Navy. After the war GSI continued to produce electronics. The rugged nature of equipment for the oil industry and of military equipment were similar and thus continued expansion into military contracts was a natural progression. In 1951 the company changed its name to Texas Instruments; GSI becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the new company.

An early success story for TI-GSI came in the 1950s when GSI was able (under a Top Secret government contract) to monitor the Soviet Union's underground nuclear weapons testing from outcrop bedrock found in Oklahoma.