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Design007-June2021

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14 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2021 Viewing Star Trek for the first time as a 19-year-old was a far different experience than viewing it years later as reruns, especially aer 1977, when Lucas brought out Star Wars. e special effects in Star Wars changed your per- spective, even if the story line was still "cow- boys and Indians in space." Even before college, my interest in electron- ics had grown through building my own short- wave radio (Figure 2). In San Diego, where I attended public school, it was required to take both wood shop and graphics arts (draing and photography) in middle school. In eighth grade, I took metal shop (fabrication and weld- ing) and electrical/electronics shop (electrical fundamentals and basic electronics). It was all from the perspective of hands-on, hand- craed wiring. To pay for my education, in addition to scholarships, I worked part time as a lab tech in the Geophysics/Oceanography Department at Oregon State University. is involved field paleo-magnetic/gravity surveys and ocean patrols on the university's exploration ship. During this period, my high school friends wrote a time-share program for the univer- sity's CDC-6600 and thus every student now had access to BASIC and Fortran. e uni- versity sold this soware to Control Data for a new CYBER-70 and the computer depart- ment expanded its DEC PDP-8 to now handle nearly 2,000 nodes. In 1968, I moved up to a job as the electronics tech for the psychology department. is was my introduction to mili- tary surplus, as the university personnel would drive 45 minutes north to Salem and pick over old and excess military gear. Since they were tearing down the old IBM- based SAGE Early Warning System, there were vast quantities of electronics and com- ponents available to salvage for student labo- ratories. Old blood plasma containers made perfect Skinner boxes (once I had modified them). Also in 1968, the psychology depart- ment received a $8,300 NSF grant for a new DEC PDP 8/L minicomputer for the student labs (Figure 3). at would be equivalent to about $86,000 today. It was my job to design Figure 2: I received an Allied three-band shortwave radio kit for Christmas in 1959 and wired it up myself. From then on, I bought kits from HeathKit or Eico, including a new color TV kit after I joined Hewlett-Packard in 1970. Star Trek had been cancelled by then.

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