Back to the Future: The Most Popular Op Amp ⁠— The μA741


The legacy of our favorite semiconductors of the 1970s

Building on Rochester Electronics’ Semiconductors of the 1970s series, we will continue with another milestone Op Amp product: the μA741. The μA741 was designed by Dave Fullagar from Fairchild and predated last month’s featured Op Amp, the LM108, by only a year. The LM108 was designed by Bob Widlar when he was with National Semiconductor in 1969.


The μA741 is not the first monolithic Op Amp, that honor belongs to the μA702, which was also designed by Bob Widlar in 1963. The μA741 was not as high-performance as the LM108, but it is credited as the product that cemented the popularity and acceptance of the Op Amp as a standard circuit building block, due to its incorporation of ease-of-use features.


What made the μA741 easy to use compared to the competition, was the integration of the 30pF frequency compensation capacitor on-chip. Today, this is a universal practice in the industry, but at the time this was something that only Fairchild’s process technology was capable of. This ease of use led to the μA741 becoming the Op Amp of choice and the most popular of all time!


The μA741 became so much an icon in the Op Amp space that every company offered their own version of this design, including single, dual, (Motorola MC1558/1458 with two independent monolithic Op Amps), and quad (Motorola MC4741 and National LM148 with four independent monolithic Op Amps) versions. The μA741 was a milestone device that spawned generations of successive designs that today still mimic its package pin out for drop-in replacement compatibility.


Analog Devices introduced an improved performance version in 1973 named the AD741. So significant was the μA741’s status that its design architecture was the model taught in textbooks on bipolar analog circuit design.


Rochester Electronics continues to stock and assemble the ubiquitous and iconic μA741 today, along with its derivatives in a vast multitude of plastic and hermetic packages in single, dual, and quad configurations.


We hope you enjoyed this latest installment in our series.


Stay tuned for more in the coming months!


Search our μA741 Op Amp inventory today!

Rochester Electronics - uA741 Op Amp