Andre Truong, father of micro-computer, has gone

Founder emblematic R2E, and co-inventor of the first micro-computer (Micral), Andre Truong died at age 69, after a long illness contracted accidentally during a hospitalization.

At the time, we hardly knew microprocessors, some had tasted in Assembly language on Nascom of 4 bits? or 'chips' of a young California company still unknown, called ... Intel (4004). Then there were the 8-bit processors, Motorola 6800, and Intel 8008. In France, young engineers interested in electronics, in 1972 had responded to a request by the INRA: designing micro-computer, programmable, inexpensive, applied to statements humidity in agronomy.


Initially, an order of INRA ... Andre Truong and his accomplice François Gernelle, assisted by another engineer, Benchitrite, won the prize. Their system oriented control process, met the specifications, a fifth of the price of a PDP8 at the time. The following year, the first micro-computer in the world saw the day: from 1973, the Micral N series was built around the Intel 8008 processor clocked at 500 kHz (about 50,000 instructions per second) with a memory of 16 koctets type MOS (metal oxide semiconductor). It already included a bus bearing the input-output parallel and serial. "We worked in a cellar at Chatenay-Malabry, about 18 hours a day," says Andrew T. "It was during the winter and 3 months, I've hardly ever emerged. The machine that I baptisai" micro-computer "is logical since he was a computer built with a" micro-processor ", Had almost all the characteristics of its big brothers on which I worked at Intertechnique: Varian 6201, Multi 8." (..) "Our monitor operating Sysmic has become Prologue in 1978, led by Michel Joubert (Prologue SA )(...) then the first hard drive Caelus mark in 1975, then DRI in 1976, the first disc 5 "1 / 4 - Allan Shuggart who had just founded Seagate in 1979 - on the Micral 8031 D".

Pioneers to lack of recognition was beaten to assert that they were well inventors of the personal computer. But in vain. The Americans Commodore, Tandy Radio Shack and other Apple Computer had already taken the baton and quickly took to conceal their work of pioneers. As a consolation, it remains a museum in Boston to certify that paternity, as well as quantities of books on the history of science.

It is true that with his mischievous smile, his eyes bright and sparkling intelligence, Andrew T. had cure of major ceremonies. He preferred to imagine, invent and design. He arrived in Saigon in 1950 at age 14, he was a student at Lycee Hoche of Versailles, which led to the famous French School of Electricité de Paris. There passionately for the miniaturization of "chips" and a return trip to California where he visited Intel, he decided to create R2E (Achievements and Electronics Studies) with a partner, JR Tissot. There Gernelle invited Francis, who claimed he, too, the paternity of the Micral.

The full array of PC Taken together, they managed to industrialize the product, with the range of subassemblies always present: motherboard with processors, cards interfaces for input / output devices to which designated the keyboard, video monitor, the unit or floppy disk and printer? There was as yet no standard operating system, no mouse: the functioning device was governed by lines of code written to a then compiled. Thanks to these irreducible inventors, France has held head a few years the American giants of the PC that were then IBM compatible Compaq, Victor, HP, Tulip ... before that Taiwan would also get a big market share.

You can find the complete article here..