The great Bob Pease, National Semiconductor's crown jewel, wrote an article many years back that described how breadboarding can be useful for prototyping even sophisticated circuits as long as the limitations are understood and heeded. Many times I have searched the Internet looking for a picture of the breadboard I recalled seeing, but to no avail. Finally, I wrote to him asking if he remembered it and he responded by saying it is the one featured on the cover of his book, "Troubleshooting Analog Circuits." You can click on the image to the left for the full picture, but the breadboard portion is show full-size below. If you would like a copy of his book, please click on the smaller thumbnail to the right.

Bob wrote, "THIS was actually the breadboard for the LM131 V-to-F converter - which I designed in 1977, and which is still being designed in, today, and is still in production. Yes, it can be used to convert voltages to F - and then you use a counter, to make a very linear digital conversion - or for F-to-V."

...and of course his famous, "I really do like SOLDERING as my programming language."