A lifetime in technology

In the summer of 1955, I got my ham radio license (KN6RBF) and began a life in technology. In the seventy years since I have seen several paradigm shifts, starting with the shift to transistors (solid state devices) from vacuum tubes (empty state devices!)

In 1956, I attended the Ham Radio convention in San Francisco with my father. At one exhibit there was a very large oscilloscope displaying a waveform with steep sides and a very flat top. I looked at it and said “man, dig them crazy skirts”. My father said I was wrong – it was a square wave. But the exhibitor said “the boy is right”. What we were looking at was the response of a 16-pole crystal filter. The base wasn’t time: it was frequency. I learned the duality lesson early!

When the microprocessor came out, Motorola came to me with a beautiful 8 1/2 x 11 inch book almost two inches thick explaining everything I needed to know about their 6800 microprocessor. Intel came to me with a two page data sheet marked “Preliminary”: one page with electrical specification, the second with the instruction set. But there was another big difference: Motorola said they would have the microprocessor ready in a couple of months, Intel gave me two in a plastic box.

Intel saved transistors by not accounting for the inversion. Motorola insisted on adding transistors so the data in and data out would have the same reference.

Guess who won the race? Multiply my experience by that of a couple of thousand other engineers, and you will see why Intel won – even though theirs was the most frustrating processor to work with.

And Texas Instruments got rich by supplying buffers for both.

First the Internet

As the Internet grew from its DARPA seed, I was there. There in the background, helping in its creation.

I followed the visionaries, doing what what I do best: making things work and making things that work. I enjoyed it: I like learning new technology, new ways of doing things.

Those were exciting days! The microprocessor was new, and the applications seemed endless.

Just do it!

So I did.