While these days the value of a Fairchild is in its venerated sonic signature, so much so that many producers have gone on record saying that they use it as a tone box, not compressing at all, in the 50’s the Fairchild was fast and offered a way to catch peaks that lesser compressors couldn’t. At the time the Fairchild was designed transistors were still in their experimental phase and super-fast designs like the 1176 wouldn’t become available for over a decade. Unlike many of its contemporaries, this compressor/limiter was fast. Big, over-engineered and designed to be an ultimate compressor (14 transformers and 20 valves in a 670). The Fairchild was always an expensive and rare beast. It was picked up by Fairchild, who licensed the design and hired Narma as chief engineer. The design was originally commissioned by Les Paul (as if audio needed another reason to thank Mr Paul for his legacy).
The Fairchild 660 and 670 were designed by Estonian born Rein Narma. The Swiss and Japanese would definitely get a mention but I nominate Estonia. If we were to look at which countries have contributed the most to the history of audio gear the top two would probably have to be the USA and the UK or Germany (discuss.). Of course once you have an accurate plug-in you can take your virtual Fairchildren and use them as channel compressors until your DSP gives up.
Equipment which is often vintage and sometimes so rare and eye-wateringly valuable (I won't say expensive because that suggests it's for sale and in the case of a Fairchild, even if you have the money, people who have them aren't selling!) that most people haven't seen one in the flesh, let alone used one.
What I mean by that is that UAD are best known for meticulous software recreations of classic analogue equipment. If for no other reason that this plug-in is the most UAD-ish of all the UAD plug-ins.
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