The ware for June 2011 is shown in context below.

“To make your good products better…” with a post mark of June 25, 1963 and addressed to Major Gilbert. Cave Johnson would be proud. This sales kit was mailed just two years after the introduction of commercial integrated circuits.

Neither the box nor the packaging reveal what the part is; this is just a generic sales kit to educate engineers about this fabulous new “solid circuit semiconductor networks” technology (“SCSN” doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as nicely as “IC”, although perhaps that’s what the SN stands for in the TI part numbering scheme for small logic devices). This makes judging a bit difficult.

My best guess is that this is a series 51 RCTL type chip. My initial thought was that it’s a dual 3-input NAND/NOR gate (SN514), due to the symmetry and the pattern of three similar devices on each side, but some of the readers pointed out that the crossed internal wirebonds could be indicative of a flip flop. The internal wirebond pattern is curious; certainly, it’s not unreasonable with just one layer of metal and diffusion for routing to call for internal wirebonds to assist with power distribution routing. It could be the case that it’s a 6-input NAND/NOR gate (SN513), where the construction is based upon the same diffusion pattern as the 3-input NAND/NOR gate, and the internal wirebonds are used to tie the necessary nodes together to put the transistors in parallel between the two half-circuits (which would be a way to make two part numbers from a single chip). This is a rare ware which, at the conclusion of the contest, we still do not have a definitive answer as to its function or part number.

Exercising my full right to be arbitrary in judging, I declare f4eru as the winner, because I found the links provided to be very helpful and interesting while researching the answer, particularly the compilation of retro circuits made by NASA. Congrats, email me for your prize!

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