Sprague’s Logic Symbols for Use with Unicircuit Integrated Circuits

Description:

This rectangular yellow translucent plastic flowcharting template has a rule six inches long divided to thirty-seconds of an inch along the top edge, and a rule ten centimeters long divided to millimeters along the bottom edge. Twenty-one holes represent flowcharting symbols. A mark along the top reads: LOGIC SYMBOLS for use with UNICIRCUIT INTEGRATED CIRCUITS. A mark at the lower left reads: ASP 376. A mark next to this one reads: SPRAGUE (/) THE MARK OF RELIABILITY.

The trademark UNICIRCUIT was first used in commerce by Sprague Electric Company Corporation of North Adams, Massachusetts, in December 1962 and granted December 31, 1963. The mark on the object indicates that the trademark had been registered. The holes on the template are only partially those proposed by subcommittee S3.6 of the American Standards Association and released in 1965.

The donor, Philip Krupen (1915–2001), was a physicist who graduated B.S. from Brooklyn College in 1935, worked on the development of the proximity fuse during and after World War II, earned a master's degree in physics from George Washington University, and spent a total of thirty-eight years working for the U.S. government before he retired in 1973.

This template is similar but not identical to one shown in the catalogue for RapiDesign, Incorporated, of Burbank, California in 1963. It had their model number 541.

References:

TESS, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Registration 0762224.

Accession File.

Robert J. Rossheim, “Report on Proposed American Flowchart Symbols for Information Processing,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 6 #10, October, 1963, pp. 599-604.

RapiDesign, Inc., Drafting Templates Catalogue No. 70, Burbank, California, 1963, p. 16.