As I may have mentioned on occasion, one of my favorite science fiction movies is the 1982 American-Hong Kong dystopian science fiction movie Blade Runner, which was directed by Ridley Scott and is often rated as one of the greatest sci-fi films ever (it was based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick).
The reason I mention this here is that one of the never-to-be-forgotten scenes in the movie is the “Tears in Rain” soliloquy by replicant Roy Batty, brilliantly played by Rutger Hauer. This starts with the line, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”
I sometimes feel the same way when talking to younger engineers, for I, too, have seen things they wouldn’t believe. For example, I’m acquainted with many younger members of the engineering fraternity who have never known a world without the internet. As part of this, they take for granted their ability to instantly access data sheets and application notes for almost any conceivable component on the planet. All I can say is that things weren’t always this way.
Before we plunge headfirst into the heart of this column with gusto and abandon (and aplomb, of course), may I invite you to join me on a brief trip into the mists of time (cue audio and video special effects) …
Although the first operational packet-switching network, ARPANET, appeared in the late 1960s, the internet as we know and love it today didn’t impinge itself on the public consciousness until circa 1993 with the launch of the NCSA Mosaic web browser, which was the first such tool that could display images inline with text (instead of in a separate window).
I recall watching news programs on television in the mid-1990s, where the presenters struggled to explain the web URL and email address appearing at the bottom of the screen, holding convoluted on-air debates about how to pronounce the ‘@’ symbol.
The early internet distinguished itself in two ways: first, there was little content on it; second, the meager content that was there was almost impossible to find unless you already knew its location (URL).
For example, one thing I recall shortly after the Mosaic browser launched was when someone posted Paris Métro schedules on the internet. This wasn’t a database or anything sophisticated like that; it was just plain text, but the idea blew everyone away. Seriously. I mean, having information on the internet that was useful to the unwashed masses was such a revolutionary concept that the news even reached your humble narrator, who was, by that time, hanging his hat in Alabama, USA.
What about internet search engines? Well, in January 1994, Yahoo started life as “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo at Stanford University. This was a human-edited search directory, where websites were categorized into topics (e.g., Sports, News, Entertainment) by hand. Users with websites entered the names of those sites and their corresponding URLs; users looking for content browsed categories instead of searching with keywords.
Two years later, in 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a search engine called BackRub at Stanford University. Unlike Yahoo, which initially relied on its human-edited directory, BackRub employed automated crawling and indexing to scan and rank the entire web. Instead of merely matching keywords like other search engines, it ranked pages based on how many other pages linked to them. In 1997, BackRub was renamed Google as a play on the word “googol” (10^100). One year later, Google Inc. was officially founded, and its search engine went live. This approach—employing automated crawling and indexing to scan and rank the entire web—made Google far more scalable and effective than its competitors, quickly leading to its dominance in the search domain.
The reason all the above is of interest to us here is that, before (a) the arrival of the internet and (b) the population of the internet with actual content, finding information about components you wished to use for your electronic projects was a pain in the nether regions.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, engineers maintained their own little mini-libraries of data books in their offices. If you were lucky, your company would have a slightly more extensive library that you could access if required. Additionally, if you lived in a location like Huntsville, Alabama (my current residence), which is widely recognized as a major hub for technology, particularly in the aerospace and defense industries, then you could consider yourself fortunate indeed. This is because all the major component manufacturers would be supported by local distributors who would be more than happy to send someone round to your office bearing a briefcase bulging with data sheets.
Now I’m thinking of Monty Python’s classic “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch (not least that I was born and bred in Yorkshire myself). This features four well-dressed men reminiscing about their difficult childhoods, each trying to outdo the others with increasingly absurd tales of hardship.
The sketch starts with mild nostalgia but quickly escalates into ridiculous exaggerations. It’s a brilliant satire of the older generation’s penchant for reminiscing about the “good old days,” ending when one of them says, “And you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won’t believe you!” It’s true, they won’t, but we digress (I know you’re shocked).
The reason I’m talking about all this here is that we now live in a golden age, in which facts and figures about almost every component known to humankind (electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic…) are available in seconds via the internet. In addition to general-purpose search engines, such as Google, there are several dedicated component search engines, each with its own advantages, disadvantages, and user interface (UI) foibles and quirks. There’s one that will remain nameless to protect the innocent (and me), that has never actually returned anything helpful related to whatever it was that I was looking for.
So, you can only imagine my surprise and delight to discover a tried and trusted electronic component search engine of which I was previously unaware. I was chatting with Kate Hubert, who is Director of E-Commerce Business Development at Supplyframe. As part of our conversation, Kate introduced me to the Findchips: Electronic Part Search Engine.
The top of the Findchips homepage.
The best way to think about Findchips is as “A hack created by an engineer that turned into a search engine.” It turns out that way back in the mists of time we used to call 1998, around the time that the Google search engine was poised to go live, an engineer called Randy Sargent was getting exceedingly frustrated with the amount of time he was spending searching individual component vendor websites, desperately delving for details depicting the components he wished to deploy in his designs.
Randy created a Perl script to scrape websites, extract the desired information, and present it in a format that was useful to him. This proved to be so valuable that it quickly evolved into direct database access, improving search efficiency and becoming a significant traffic driver for suppliers.
Between you and me, I place a lot of faith in a tool that a real engineer created to make his life easier (if you can’t trust an engineer, who can you trust?). Findchips was acquired by Supplyframe in 2010, a fact we will revisit momentarily. Meanwhile, following ten years as a Computer Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and five years as a Visiting Scientist at Google, Randy ended up in his current role as a Senior Systems Scientist for Carnegie Mellon University.
You can read an article about Randy and Findchips on Hackaday.com, which, much to my surprise (along with Hackaday.io), also turns out to be part of the Supplyframe empire.
I just entered “LS18-P,” which is the part number for one of our switch debounce ICs (I also serve as the CTO for LogiSwitch), and I must say I was impressed by the lightning-fast response. I also appreciated the fact that no login was required; you only need to register if you wish to receive email alerts about selected parts, and you need only provide your company email address and create a password.
I could waffle on about the Findchips interface for ages. The team has been intentional about keeping the user experience as simple and seamless as possible, focusing on helping engineers find the most relevant information with as few clicks as necessary.
You can download data sheets, view prices and stock levels, and access CAD models. Other component search engines offer these capabilities, but not always in a manner that is as user-friendly. This is one reason Findchips is now my preferred component search engine. One unique function offered by Findchips is the ability to compare similar parts side by side, which is far more helpful than many people might realize.
However, I don’t need to discuss this further, as you can easily visit Findchips and try it out for yourself. What I did want to touch on in a tad more detail is Supplyframe’s unique position in the electronics industry (remember I told you that Supplyframe acquired Findchips in 2010).
Supplyframe is a technology company that provides market intelligence and supply chain solutions for the electronics industry. When it was founded, Supplyframe’s goal was to address inefficiencies in sourcing electronic components and to improve the process for engineers by providing an online platform that aggregates data, design resources, and component sourcing tools. To achieve this goal, Supplyframe offers tools and platforms that enable engineers, procurement professionals, and manufacturers to optimize component sourcing, design processes, and risk management.
Supplyframe’s Design-to-Source Intelligence (DSI) approach leverages real-time data, AI-driven insights, and predictive analytics to streamline decision-making from product design to procurement. It helps businesses reduce supply chain risks, improve cost efficiency, and accelerate time to market by integrating market trends, component availability, and supplier insights directly into the design and sourcing workflow.
They address over 600 million components, and more than 12 million engineering, procurement, and supply chain professionals utilize the Supplyframe DSI ecosystem. What truly sets Supplyframe apart from its competitors is the comprehensive ecosystem of over 70 free websites that fuels its DSI. These sites are designed to help design engineers and buyers at each stage of the design cycle, including research, prototyping, evaluation, and purchasing. The intelligence that Supplyframe collects from these 70+ sites fuels its enterprise software tools for quoting, BOMs, NPI, sourcing, and more.
In fact, Supplyframe’s DSI has proved to be so valuable that the company was itself acquired by Siemens in 2021. I’m afraid this is the point where my head just filled to overflowing. I find convoluted corporate complexities to be confusing, so I’m going to return to play with something I can wrap my poor old noggin around in the form of Findchips, which I’m going to use to check out the prices of some of the components on my “to buy” list.
How about you? Are there any component search-related tales you’d care to share regarding any of your own experiences, both pre- and post-internet?
