1978 · Electronic Engine Control · Work 907 of 1,871
An engine test cell in Dearborn in Michigan, a bare V8 engine painted dark blue on a steel test frame, beside it on a steel table a flat rectangular box of brushed aluminium twenty-five centimetres long and five centimetres high on a larger mounting plate with side tabs and slots, plain smooth and unmarked, at its front end four black plastic connector sockets in a row, two with a small red and a blue dot, thick wire harnesses wrapped in black tape running from them to the engine, an engineer in a short-sleeved white shirt seen from directly behind, one hand on a connector, oil stains on the concrete floor, fluorescent light.
What it was used for
Ford's Electronic Engine Control ran a production car's engine electronically in order to meet emission limits. The Computer History Museum holds an "EEC-I processor assembly electronic engine control" by Ford Motor Company and Motorcraft, dated 1978, 17.78 x 5.08 x 25.4 cm, with a sticker on its underside: "Warranty Item DO NOT OPEN Ford". The computing core for Ford's EEC project came from Toshiba: the Semiconductor History Museum of Japan describes the TLCS-12 CPU, 5.5 x 5.9 mm, about 2800 gates, silicon gate 6 µm process.
What was new
What was new was the occasion, not the computing. The Japanese semiconductor museum names the US clean air legislation of 1970 as the trigger: the processor entered the engine because emission limits had to be met. The barb is the chronology. The TLCS-12 was developed in 1973 according to the museum, and mass production began in 1975 "after real vehicle running tests" - while the vehicle control unit held by the CHM is dated 1978.
What the sources leave open: Neither source states outright that the TLCS-12 or a variant of it ran in the 1978 EEC-I; the semiconductor museum only names Toshiba's part in "Ford's Electronic Engine Control (EEC) project". The CHM record describes the object, not the car. SAE paper 780842 on Ford's EEC is attested but was not read; no unit numbers.