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LM3914

bar/dot LED display driver IC

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 26, 2025
Entity authorityQ338039
Source-derived summary

The LM3914 is an integrated circuit (IC), designed by National Semiconductor in the late 1970s, used to operate displays that visually show the magnitude of an analog signal. It can drive up to 10 LEDs, LCDs, or vacuum fluorescent displays on its outputs. The linear scaling of the output thresholds makes the device usable, for example, as a voltmeter. In the basic configuration it provides a ten step scale which is expandable to over 100 segments with other LM3914 ICs in series.

Features

The LM3914 / LM3915 / LM3916 are identical except for the ten resistor divider inside each part.

LM3914 – linear steps, scaled by a resistor divider consisting of ten 1000 ohm resistors.

LM3915 – 3dB logarithmic steps, scaled by a resistor divider consisting of 6630, 4690, 3310, 2340, 1660, 1170, 830, 590, 410, 1000 ohm resistors.

LM3916 – VU-meter steps, scaled by a resistor divider consisting of 1087, 970, 864, 769, 1298, 1031, 819, 923, 1531, 708 ohm resistors.

All the devices in this group operate with a range of voltages of 3–25 V, can drive LED and VFD displays. They can provide a regulated output current between 2-30 mA to directly drive displays.

Editorial summary

“LM3914” enters the record as bar/dot LED display driver IC. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what LM3914, display and driver can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1000, 1660, 1170, 1087—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around LM3914, display and driver.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“LM3914” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, LM3914, display and driver provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q338039. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1000, 1660, 1170 and 1087.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow LM3914 primary sources, LM3914 archive and LM3914 research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from LM3914” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.