Memory" datasheet was created "as a lark" by Signetics engineer John G "Jack" Curtis, inspired by a fictitious and humorous vacuum tube datasheet from the 1940s. Considered "an icebreaker", it was deliberately included in the Signetics catalog.

Roy L Twitty, a Signetics PR representative, released a tongue-in-cheek press release touting WOM on April 1, 1973. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 "fully encoded, 9046×N, Random Access, write-only-memory" data sheet included meaningless diagrams of "bit capacity