Talk:Operational amplifier

Will be calling this article to the attention of various admins
…as a near to completely plagiarised, blatantly academically dishonest presentation of electronics/electrical engineering content. This is no common knowledge material. Whatever the history of the article, current editors need to review WP:VERIFY and WP:OR, and stop rationalizing that the article is fine. Section after section, paragraph after paragraph of material taken from external sources unnamed is plagiarism and violates WP:VER. Expert content written by WP editors from their personal knowledge base that cites no sources to allow verification violates both WP:VER and WP:OR. There is no excuse for this (especially not that it has always been this way, or that many articles are likewise in violation). I will call attention to this in whatever ways I can, to make clear the hypocrisy of longstanding, basic science and technology articles, whose material is unsourced, and therefore non-encyclopedic and dishonest. Le Prof 73.211.138.148 (talk) 00:28, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What sources were used? What sources do you suspect were used? --Mr. Vernon (talk) 00:35, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That is the very point—we do not know, despite this being required by WP:VER. Hence, it is either plagiarised, or original research, both of which are prohibited. See next example. Leprof 7272 (talk) 00:38, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * An example, because an editor has come on, indicate light sourcing, but no issue. In the first major section, tens of lines long, where appears the following equation:
 * $$V_\text{out} = V_\text{in} + i \times R_f = V_\text{in} + \left(\frac {V_\text{in}} {R_g} \times R_f\right) = V_\text{in} + \frac{V_\text{in} \times R_f} {R_g} = V_\text{in} \left(1 + \frac{R_f} {R_g}\right)$$
 * there is but a single citation, and it only appears in the third subsection, leaving the first two subsections of the first section completely unsourced, and this particular non-common knowledge violation of WP:OR and WP:VER unsourced as well.  Moreover, this section represents the rule—sections with block after block of unsourced material—and not an exception. Leprof 7272 (talk) 00:38, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If you believe this to be a violation of copyrighted materials, by all means bring it to WP:CP. --Mr. Vernon (talk) 00:42, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Even if public domain material was used, it is nevertheless plagiarised until that public domain source is named. The sloppiness reflected in cribbing material from sources without attribution makes it reasonable to assume that the same sloppiness might have been applied, both to public domain information, and to copyrighted sources. The tag should remain until it is determined where the bulk of material was drawn, and that source is named. Leprof 7272 (talk) 00:46, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not doubting you. There are admins and editors on WP:CP who are bloodhounds at sniffing out the source of copyrighted content. It should be removed and it would be very helpful if you would report it. As an editor who recently spent a significant amount of time tagging obvious copyvios for speedy delete, I would certainly appreciate it. --Mr. Vernon (talk) 00:50, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

There is a big difference between "unsourced" and OR. OR would mean an editor made up the equations, and the circuits, shown here. However, almost everything in this article was commonly covered in undergraduate courses in EE since at least the early 1970s. Every calculation shown here has been done thousands, if not millions, of times by students in the last half century. So almost all the statements here are not OR that should be removed - they are correct statements representing common knowledge in the field. Furthermore they *are* referenced - the sources in "For further reading" and "External links" include all the information given in the article, plus a lot more, including many reliable sources in the technical literature.

As far as copyright violation, as an experiment I took three phrases from the section you mention. I looked in Google scholar, Google books, and the usual google search. In previous cases I have investigated, this almost always found the original source. Here, one of the phrases was indeed found in other sources, but all of them I could find were later than the introduction of the text into Wikipedia. Hence they were likely copied from Wikipedia, and not vice versa.

Overall, citations per paragraph would be nice, but this a mechanical exercise given the references already provided. And of course copyrighted text should be removed, if it is found in the article. But this situation is not as dire as you portray. LouScheffer (talk) 05:18, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * To the OP: article talk pages should be used for actionable proposals. There is nothing to substantiate a need for copyvio or too-technical tags. Please post a reason why these tags should be retained. People with an understanding of the topic can see that it is just a bunch or routine statements in accord with hundreds of basic text books. Yes, more sources would be good, but there is no reason to think WP:OR is involved. Per LouScheffer's analysis and past experience, it is very unlikely that anything in the article is a copyvio. Johnuniq (talk) 06:17, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Not OR, and not COPYVIO either. These derivations and formulas are part of the common knowledge and appear in one form or other in every book on the topic. One might as well claim that any rendition of Ohm's Law or Maxwell's equations must also be a COPYVIO. Heck, the derivation quoted above is Ohm's Law, restated with the symbols used in that context. Jeh (talk) 09:06, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. Many things are commonly known, and so not WP:OR, though someone can always question it. Most things from undergraduate texts are commonly known and don't need a reference, though sometimes it is nice to have one, anyway. Gah4 (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. Many things are commonly known, and so not WP:OR, though someone can always question it. Most things from undergraduate texts are commonly known and don't need a reference, though sometimes it is nice to have one, anyway. Gah4 (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

nb1
Regarding nb1 and the definition of zero. Because of the high open-loop gain, it doesn't matter so much the exact meaning of zero. In most cases, it is only in a completed circuit where the definition matters. Otherwise, for ones that do have the offset leads, you build the circuit and then adjust for the appropriate zero, which might include some other offsets, too. Gah4 (talk) 00:20, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Timeline - FET OPs
In the timeline the point under 1970s about FET OPs is a bit confusing and vague. The early FET OPs were JFET based as hybrids - so seprate chips for the JFETs at the input and the main part. Later came JFET based monolytic OPs and also CMOS based monolytic OPs. CMOS OPs got a lot more popular, espeically for low votlage use, but have not fully replaced monolytic JFET input OPs - only for a few super low bias applications. Relevant milestones may be the first monolytic JFET input OP and CMOS OP - could be problematic if the early ones were rare, special ones. --Ulrich67 (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

First produced
The first produced year seems to be for the 741, but that wasn't the first opamp. The uA702 was released in 1963, which was probably the first monolithic opamp. But there were opamps before that. 72.74.174.182 (talk) 03:48, 5 January 2023 (UTC)


 * The 741 was released in 1968. I'm not sure what the 1967 year refers to. Craig Stuntz (talk) 17:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

"First produced"
The article currently has "First produced" in the infobox set to 1967, which seems odd to me, as this year is not the date of the first op amp, first commercial op amp, first IC op amp, or the op amp pictured directly above. I am not sure which of these things "First produced" is supposed to refer to, but in any event the date seems wrong? Craig Stuntz (talk) 17:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed and removed. Constant314 (talk) 18:10, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * There were op-amps produced with discrete transistors, sometimes molded into a plastic block. Maybe even after ICs, as they might be lower noise or otherwise better. But I don't know any dates. Gah4 (talk) 07:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * There were op-amps produced with discrete transistors, sometimes molded into a plastic block. Maybe even after ICs, as they might be lower noise or otherwise better. But I don't know any dates. Gah4 (talk) 07:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * There were op-amps produced with discrete transistors, sometimes molded into a plastic block. Maybe even after ICs, as they might be lower noise or otherwise better. But I don't know any dates. Gah4 (talk) 07:13, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

zero offset
The offset could be specified as an input offset voltage (to get zero output), or output voltage with zero input. I don't know that one is better, which might be why the statement in the recent edit isn't so obvious. Gah4 (talk) 07:15, 26 March 2024 (UTC)