Electronic Corner

A little time before 1960 was developed a revoluctionary integrated circuit: the timer 555 or, how was named, the "time machine in an integrated circuit". It helped circuit developers and hobbysts to making their projects, because it appeared a cheap component, simple and secure.

In a little time from the final development of this component, a large number of projects, articles, circuits and new designs appeared on most of commercial publications.

The timer 555 integrated circuit is a monolithic circuit for timing applications, you can find it in some different packages, a metallic TO-99, a plastic DIP 8 pin (most common) and also plastic DIP 14 pin.

The Signetics Corporation was the first big company to introducing this component with the signature SE 555/NE 555 but many others today sell their timers with different names:

  The timer 555 presents a good degree of precision and is very stable. The values from calculus often are the same that the presented values after assembling, with a difference of 1%. Also the variations of the circuit's parameters caused by power supply variations are little.