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owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

Registered by Motorola in 1962 and the mid-1960s, the 2N2222 and 2N3904 outlasted thousands of rivals through process innovation, cheap packaging, and a JEDEC numbering system that turned them into multi-sourced commodities.

More than 60 years after Motorola Semiconductor first registered them with the EIA, the 2N2222 and 2N3904 are still in volume production from at least half a dozen manufacturers, still stocked by every major distributor, and still the default NPN small-signal transistors used in hobby projects, university labs, and U.S. military supply chains.

Almost every other discrete transistor introduced in the same window has long since vanished. The two parts that survived did so not because they were technically superior to their rivals, but because of decisions Motorola made about how to manufacture, package, and license them.

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