--- In LTspice@..., "Dick Benson" <w1qg@...> wrote:
The grandfather of all SPICE programs was a PhD thesis in one
of the California universities. It was even called SPICE, which
indicated a (S? Program for Integrated Circuit Engineering).
It's primary purpose was MOS circuits as I recall. It was mid
to late 60's I think.
A sincere thanks for your input, but most of what you write is
only vaguely in the neighborhood of being factual (too bad you
didn't bother to read the LTwiki page originally linked before
posting so much misinformation). Your post may be a good example
of how whisper circles are able to so quickly turn a true story
into complete fantasy as it travels from person to person around
the circle. For a bullet-list summary of the real facts, see:
The *father* of all SPICE programs was called CANCER, Computer
Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation (SPICE was
its immediate progeny).
SPICE is an acronym for "Simulation Program with IC Emphasis."
The first version of SPICE included built-in models for diodes,
bipolar transistors, MOSFETs, and JFETs. MOSFET devices were
not part of the original CANCER/SPICE code, but were only added
to facilitate the teaching of a class. *Bipolar devices* were
the original primary focus of SPICE. However, not too long after
MOS devices were added to the mix, they did indeed take over the
focus of device model development at Berkeley.
SPICE was neither developed nor released in the mid to late 60s.
CANCER began in 1969, but it was at least 1970 before the SPICE
acronym was conceived and work on the code was started. (But
thanks for playing.)
Segueing back to the history of LTspice, I just found a very in-
formative article that appeared in Electronic Design from October
of last year. In the middle, it has a long section in which Mike
Engelhardt recounts in a level of detail that I haven't seen
elsewhere, the technical history of the development of LTspice.
Amazingly, one of the links at the end of this article is to one
of the first widely publicized announcements of LTspice (which was
SwitcherCAD III back then) and which appeared in Electronic Design
in May of 2001. (I'll have to link this from the wiki.)
