Twin Poems

This was scanned from a small notebook of my poetry:

 

Doing Science in History Class

First I learned that lightning is seen before the thunder is heard because light travels much faster than sound. But I was really fascinated when I learned that the distance between the lightning and the observer could be measured by the time between the lightning and the thunder -- five seconds correspond to about a mile. I was fascinated because I figured that by making such measurements and plotting them on a graph, one could track the movement of an approaching thunderstorm, and could estimate the time of its arrival. The graph would look something like this:

The vertical scale would measure the lightning-to-thunder delay in seconds (inferring distance), and the horizontal scale would record the time of each measurement. As the storm approaches, the distance would decrease, so the graph would show a downward trend. If all the lightning came from the exact center of the storm, and the storm came toward me with constant speed, the graph would show a straight line. But, of course, the lightning strikes would be scattered throughout the storm cell, so the plotted measurements would also be scattered. However, by estimating a straight line through the center of the plotted points, the path of the center of the storm could be estimated.

I wanted to try this idea the next time that I heard the thunder of an approaching storm. To be prepared to record measurements immediately, I prepared a blank chart and kept it inside one of my textbooks so that I would be prepared whether at school or at home.

The opportunity came when I was in History class. The sky outside was darkening, and soon I began to hear thunder in the distance. I pulled out my chart, and started counting the seconds between lightning and thunder while trying to listen to the teacher -- or at least try to look like I was listening. But now and then I would glance toward the clock and my head would dip as I recorded another measurement.

As the storm approached, the measurements became more frequent, and I became more absorbed in my science project. At some point, I suddenly realized that the history teacher had stopped talking, and when I looked toward the front of the classroom, the teacher was not there.

Then I heard the teacher's voice right behind me, asking "what are you doing?" As I turned to look over my shoulder, I saw that she was looking over my shoulder with a puzzled look, trying to figure out what my chart was all about.

It was too late to hide my chart. I might as well explain what I was doing, I thought, especially since she seemed a bit curious. I hoped that I might get by with just a warning. As I explained my chart, the teacher asked me to speak up so all of the class could hear. I ended by pleading that I really didn't plan to do this during history class, but since that was when the storm came, I didn't have any other choice.

To my surprise, the teacher told me to continue my experiment! Furthermore, she said that when I had enough data to predict when the rain would start, to raise my hand and announce my prediction, announcing this to the rest of the class.

With a sense of relief, I returned to my counting and recording in earnest, no longer worried about hiding my activity. At some point, I had enough points plotted to be able to hold a transparent straight-edge over the graph and estimate a best-fit straight line. The point where this line intersected the bottom edge of the graph (representing zero distance) indicated the arrival time of the storm.

I raised my hand, and the teacher interrupted her lecture. "Two minutes after the hour" I declared, hoping that I wouldn't be embarrassed by a big error. I continued with more data recording, hoping to confirm this estimate as I completed the experiment.

When the rain started, it didn't creep up gradually with an uncertain start time. It suddenly crashed against the tall windows along the entire left side of the classroom, as though some giant had thrown a huge bucketful of water against the windows. Everyone was startled and first looked to the left at the rain suddenly pouring down the windows, than all heads turned in unison to the right, toward the clock. It was two minutes after the hour! exactly! and cheering erupted spontaneously. I was surprised by the accuracy of the prediction, but felt completely exonerated.

I did the same experiment later, at other opportunities, and learned that there was generally a difference between the arrival of the average center of the lightning and the arrival of the leading edge of the rain. Also, if the storm passes by one side of the observer, the graph would tend to be curved rather than follow a straight line. As I looked back at my first experiment, I realized that I was lucky that a number of errors happened to cancel, resulting in an unusually accurate prediction.

My Summer Projects

I have taken pictures while doing a series of projects over the last two months, and put them into an album on PicasaWeb, with captions. The link below goes to this album.

After we had new siding put on the house, it became apparent that the fiberglass wall on the west side of the house looked bad by comparison. But we liked the fact that the fiberglass, which is translucent, lets light into the shop/storage area, which has no windows. So we decided to hide the fiberglass wall with a trellis, and hide the air conditioner as well.

We had a string of potted herbs and flowers along that wall, and I had been thinking of making a raised bed for planting herbs. Over the last two years, I have been developing soil from compost for this raised bed, in another area. So we decided to put a raised bed for herbs and flowers below and in front of the trellis. We could also plant clematis in the bed to climb on the trellis.

The raised bed would require that the walkway of stones (small stones and round stepping stones) would need to be moved further away from the house. Over the years, debris falling on the stones has turned into soil, making it difficult to stop weeds from growing. So we might as well sift out the soil and wash the stones while moving them. Around the corner (south), the dirty stone problem was even worse, due to a bird feeder at the back of the house. So the stone cleaning operation would include that area, also. The soil from the stones could also be used for the raised bed.

We also have had a problem with grass along-side the stones growing in among the stones, causing the stone/grass boundary to migrate. So we would also add plastic edging (mostly underground wall) at the stone/grass boundary to prevent the migration.

When making a list of the required lumber for the raised bed and the frame to support the trellis, I realized that I would need to rent a truck to transport the lumber. I also wanted to build two shelf units to better organize the shop/storage area, so I added the lumber for the shelves to the list to save an extra truck rental.

So the trellis idea led to the raised bed, which led to stone cleaning; and the trellis and raised bed led to getting started on the storage shelves. I made detailed measurements and plans for all these projects, but absolutely no schedule. But once I got started, I wanted to keep going as much as possible.

Yes, I'm retired. But retirement isn't doing nothing. It's having no schedule.

Summer Projects Photo Album

The Day I Saw a UFO

A scientist was once asked if he believed in UFOs, and he replied like this: "Of course; any flying object that is unidentified is a UFO."

I remember when, many years ago, I saw a UFO. I was spading the garden, and taking a break, I thrust my shovel into the soft earth and looked around. I was near the pear tree, where hung the wren's nest box, so I looked to my left to look for the wren that I'd noticed coming and going earlier. I watched her enter the nest box with an insect that she'd found, then after feeding her brood, fly off again.

I looked forward again, and there was the UFO, hovering in the air in front of me, close enough to touch if I only dared to do so. I'd heard of UFOs darting about in the sky, but this one hovered motionlessly just two feet in front of me.

It looked like a wooden ball about an inch and a half in diameter. I suppose some would have looked for little doors or windows for the tiny aliens. Still others might have looked for the face of Mary; but I just stood there pondering the laws of physics.
(unretouched photo of reconstructed scene)
I remember seeing tent caterpillars hanging from invisible threads, but they swayed in the breeze. I guessed that a wooden ball that size would be too heavy for one of those threads; but nonetheless, I looked up. No, the pear tree was too far away, and there wasn't even a cloud to hang the ball from.

I would have to experiment a bit to figure this out. I passed my hand over the ball, then under it, then on its left and right, as though slicing a box of air around it. So far, the wooden UFO hovered undisturbed. There remained just two sides of the 'box of air' to be checked: in front and behind the wooden UFO.

As I sliced the air behind the UFO, it was quickly obvious what the 'flying object' was, and immediately it lost its 'UFO' status. The wooden ball was the tip of the handle of my shovel that I had thrust into the soft earth in front of me, and had forgotten. The round end of the handle was two feet away, but the blade of the shovel was about seven feet away and thus out-of-focus. The handle of an old-fashioned shovel has a slight bulb-like swelling of its tip, so that the shaft cannot be seen behind the tip even when the shaft is not exactly pointed toward the observer's eye.

To get the above photo, I reconstructed the scene by thrusting an old shovel into a strip of spaded ground between our lawn (on the left) and the neighbor's fence (on the right). If I were more adept with advanced camera settings, I might have made the background more out-of-focus, to simulate what the eye sees. But instead, I found an angle where the shovel blade is hidden behind the much-closer tip of the handle.

What if I were not so cool and patient in my reaction, but instead had panicked and ran away without investigating? Then the object might have remained a UFO forever. But it is also possible that an explanation of the observation as the tip of the shovel might be discovered later. Lacking the experiments that I did which confirmed that it was the shovel-tip, this explanation would be essentially theoretical, although it probably is the only plausible explanation.

Some people believe that observations of UFOs prove something, but that is not logical. Until you have an identification or an explanation, nothing can be proved. You simply have a question with insufficient data to get an answer.

The Better Mouse Trap

When I recall my youth, I remember a number of activities that foretold my career as an engineer, including the time that I tried to make a better mouse trap.

We sometimes had mice (I remember Mom catching one with a broom and a dustpan), so we also had mousetraps. I noticed that mice could sometimes nibble the cheese gently enough to avoid getting caught, so I concluded that the triggering lever wasn’t sensitive enough. The big strong lever for catching the mouse was held by a second lever, which in turn was held by a third triggering lever that held the cheese.

I figured out that the purpose of the second lever was to reduce the force at the triggering lever. But the problem was that the triggering force was not reduced enough. So I built a mouse trap with more levers. As best as I can recall, the improved design was something like this:

A triggering lever made of a length of horse-hair held a stouter lever made of a broom-straw, which held a lever made of a tooth-pick, which held a lever made of a Popsicle stick, which held the strong capturing lever. The horse-hair didn’t need to hold the cheese, because the mouse’s whiskers would spring the trap if he just got close enough to sniff the cheese.

To test the trap, I set it up on the stairs that went from the kitchen up to the boys’ bedroom. (My three brothers and I shared one big bedroom.)

Now you must understand that one could not tip-toe up these stairs without most of the steps creaking. (This was advantageous to us boys when our parents could hear mischievous noise coming from the bedroom, and one of them tried to sneak up the stairs to find out who was doing what. But that’s another story.) But actually you could sneak up the stairs noiselessly if you knew the secret sequence: step over the first three steps, landing on the far left side of the fourth step, then go to the far right of the sixth step. etc.

Because the trap was essentially a vibration sensor, I thought that by setting it up near the top of the stairs, one of my brothers would walk up the stairs, would creak a step near the trap, and then be surprised by the trap snapping.

So I set up the mouse trap on the stairs – easy to say, but tedious to do. First, pull back the big spring lever, then get the Popsicle stick to hold it down, then set the tooth-pick to hold the Popsicle stick, then set the broom-straw to hold the tooth-pick, then set the horse-hair to hold the broom-straw. The process got more and more delicate.

That done, I next had to retreat, navigating the secret sequence in reverse. I tip-toed down nearly to the bottom when I miscalculated, a step creaked, and ten steps above me, the trap snapped shut.

That was the end of the experiment. I concluded that the trap was a bit too sensitive.

The Nine-Bite Sandwich

The Nine-Bite Sandwich was one of my early, unpatented inventions, before I entered the field of electrical engineering. It may have had its origins in some earlier, secret culinary experiments conducted in the kitchen when nobody else, especially not my mother, was in the house. Those experiments turned out rather badly — so distasteful, in fact, that I'd rather not remind myself any further about them. The Nine-Bite Sandwich, however, was successful enough that I shared it with the rest of the family. As a father, I have explained it to my children, and now I document it for further generations.

The Nine-Bite Sandwich is a Construction process followed by an Eating process, which I will explain with patent-style drawings. Since it is not patented, I hereby put it into the Public Domain.

Ingredients

The ingredients are two slices of bread and four different spreads of your choice. For the bread, use sandwich bread — the real kind, not that so-called 'Wonder bread' ("I wonder why they call it bread", I always say) that sticks to your gums and palate. For the spreads, I will illustrate with peanut butter (PB), margarine (M), blueberry jam (BB) and strawberry preserves (SB); but you can choose your own.

The Construction Process

As shown in Figure 1, lay the slices of bread (S1 and S2) down in a symmetrical position. This is needed so that the slices will fit neatly when one slice is turned over onto the other slice.

Figure 1

As shown in Figure 2, spread margarine (M) on the left half of slice S1, and spread peanut butter (PB) on the right half of slice S1. Also, spread blueberry jam (BB) on the top half of slice S2, and spread strawberry preserves (SB) on the bottom half of slice S2.

Figure 2

As shown in Figure 3, turn slice S1 (the one on the left) onto slice S2. Notice that this instantly creates four flavor combinations as shown.

Figure 3
The Eating Process

As shown in Figure 4, take the first four bites from the corners of the sandwich as shown. You can peek first, to anticipate each flavor combination, or you can surprise yourself by flipping or rotating the sandwich a few times first.

Figure 4

As shown in Figure 5, take the next four bites from the 'arms' of the cross shape left by the first four bites. Notice that these bites are three-flavor combinations — a more complex flavor experience.

Figure 5
The remaining center is the last, ninth bite. It combines the flavors of all four spreads. This sandwich is fun to make and eat because each bite is a different flavor combination. Yet the sandwich is really quite easy to make.

Growing Up Shy

One of my earliest memories is when I was about three. I had been invited to a birthday party, and I was taken to the house where the party was, and dropped off. I had never visited other houses before or played with kids outside my family before. A lady in the house took me to a room full of loudly screaming kids. It intimidated me, so I began to cry. She tried to coax me into joining the party, but I would have none of it. Finally, she led me to the end of a hallway and showed me a toddler-sized desk-seat combination where the desk-top was a pegboard, and there was a supply of pegs of various colors. She demonstrated to me how the pegs could be put into the holes and invited me to sit down and try it. It was a quiet nook far from that noisy, scary room, and the novel toy kept me happily occupied until the party was over and it was time for me to go home.

I don't remember interacting much with other kids in kindergarten -- I avoided competition for the toys, and preferred to play by myself. But I do remember once talking to another boy. I was playing with some turtle-shaped metal containers on a window sill when the boy told me that he wished that the sunshine would shine on the other side of the room opposite from the windows. I told him that the sun was high in the sky and light travels in straight lines, so it couldn't reach that side of the room. (Many years later, I wondered how I knew at that age that light travels in straight lines, and figured that it might have been from clapping with chalky hands and seeing the sunlight from the window make straight beams in the cloud of dust.)

As I progressed through school, I didn't talk much, so most of the other kids ignored me. But I was watching them. I remember at an early age having an infatuation with a pretty girl that sat about four seats in front of me. One day I left a note in her desk before she arrived in the classroom, saying "I love you. Jimmy". I assumed that she would be as secretive about it as I was, but no -- when she found it, she blurted out loud to the girls around her "Oh, isn't this cute, Jimmy loves me!" I wished there was a trap-door in the floor that I could disappear through. I learned that communication with the opposite sex was hazardous.

Shy people are careful about talking, especially with strangers, because they are not sure what the reaction will be. They prefer to listen and observe, and I think that they learn more. But talking wasn't a problem at home -- I talked and talked -- they said I lectured. They called me "the professor" or sometimes "the absent-minded professor".

In gym class, however, communication was physical, and I felt I could get some respect. When playing dodge ball, most boys figured that the safest strategy was to hide behind someone else. But when the ball was thrown at the boy in front, you couldn't see the ball coming, and didn't have enough time to react to the direction that he dodged. I thought it was safer to stay in the open where you could see the ball coming, and in back where you had more reaction time. So I was often the last one left, and they would gang up on me, throwing two balls at once. I soon learned how to dodge two balls at once. The trickiest situation was when one ball was high and one low -- I jumped up and turned horizontal, putting my body between the two balls.

Another gym activity took place on a wrestling mat. Half a dozen boys started on the mat. Any one touching the floor off the mat would be out of the game, until only one was left. I had experience wrestling with my three brothers, so it was hard to get me off the mat. Again, they ganged up on me. Four boys went after me, each taking one leg or arm. But I could sense which of them had a solid stance on the mat, and which could be more easily pushed or pulled over. So I braced myself against the ones that were solid to push or pull the others. Another part of the strategy was confusing them as to whether it was a pulling struggle or pushing. And, since they surrounded me, I was in the middle, and less likely to be the first one over the edge of the mat. We went at it for quite a while before the instructor finally stopped the game.

When I was in college, an Israeli student, Marvin Haufmann, befriended me. I remember many times when he would be sitting at a table in the school cafeteria with his Israeli buddies, chatting in Hebrew. He would motion me to come join them, and tell his buddies to switch to English for my sake. Several of them had been aircraft mechanics in the Israeli Air Force, and it was interesting to hear their recollections of 24-cylinder aircraft engines, and other stories. But what was more interesting was how they shared stories and concerns without embarrassment, what a shy person would be afraid to discuss, and everyone was quite accepting. I thought I could learn to talk like that, too, and that's when I started to lose my shyness.

Communication

I've been a designer of communications systems for 43 years (now retired), and because these are so complex, it takes dozens of people to design something like a military radio, and hundreds of people for something like GPS. And my company has several divisions across the US, and deals with many different government agencies. So along the way, I've learned something of the art of personal communication while designing electronic communications systems.

In engineering work, there are a lot of specialties -- different people have different areas of expertise. For any project, a variety of specialties are needed, and they need to communicate and cooperate to fulfil all the needs of the project. There were situations where I had longer and broader experience than others on the project, but nonetheless, they had more expertise than I in certain important areas. So I showed respect for their expertise and they showed respect for mine.

Take for example the Phase Meter invention that I mentioned in my post "Invention or Discovery". The performance of the phase meter was predicted by simulations and 'paper' analysis -- no actual phase meter was built. So at some point, my boss asked me to build and test a prototype model, with the help of others. Part of the design was hardware, detailed by two engineers in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Another part of the design was software, detailed by two programmers in San Diego, California. And I guided them, providing data from my simulations, in Clifton, New Jersey (all ITT locations). I didn't know any of the others beforehand, except John Petzinger (co-inventor), but communicated mostly by email, and occasionally by telephone. I saw some of them face to face when we were finally ready to put it all together and test it. But it was a success, proving the simulations to be correct.

Knowing that people tend to distrust strangers, I showed appreciation for their work at every opportunity, respect and thanks for their ideas, and honest praise (but not overdone. or it wouldn't sound sincere) when they were successful. Then whenever it became necessary for me to criticize or point out errors, it was not taken personally, but accepted as necessary to make the project a success. And I was careful to admit my own errors when that happened, and to thank them for finding them. After a while, I sensed a friendly tone in their e-mails, and sensed that they were not afraid to ask for help when needed, nor embarrassed to admit that they didn't understand something. Such barriers to communication can seriously hurt a project, because full cooperation and complete and accurate knowledge is important when a project is full of many complex details.

On another project, I first made the acquaintance of an engineer by email, and my initial impression was that he was careless or misinformed. However, it turned out that he was quite careful and knowledgable, but awkward expressing himself in writing.

I recall two cases where another engineer did something dumb and had a bad attitude, although most of the time people were intelligent and civil. In the first case, the engineer connected some data paths so that sometimes the data was reversed. It was like making a dictionary where sometimes the words are spelled backwards. ('Provide' is listed near 'edition' because it is spelled 'edivorp'.) When the error was pointed out to him, he insisted that nothing was wrong, and refused to change the connections. Soon afterward, he was fired.

Several years later, I wrote a specification for a digital radio design, and another engineer working miles away decided to ignore the specification. The specified data sequence was not compatible with test equipment that he wanted to use, making it inconvenient for him to test the radio. So he changed the design to fit the test equipment, rather than adapt the test equipment to fit the design. Again, it was improper data reversal, and refusal to correct the design. The design needed to be as specified to be compatible with another radio.

He didn't work directly for me, so I couldn't make him change it. I had to explain the situation to my boss, who talked to his boss, who made him change it. But I still had to work with him (over the phone), and I knew he wasn't likely to cooperate if I called him a jerk (although he was), so I treated him like a gentleman, in spite of his grumblings, so the job could get done.

Electronic Advances

I began my engineering career in 1959, and it is not only amazing how technology has advanced since then, but I feel privileged to have been able to see much of it first-hand.

The junction transistor was invented in 1948, but it needed development before it was practical to use it. Computers had used vacuum tubes until the first fully transistorized computer in 1954, just five years before I started my career. I remember trying different circuit configurations that could acheive the same function, then counting the transistors so that I could select the lowest-cost configuration. That was important, because each transistor cost about $5 to $10. (Other kinds of transistors cost $45 or more.) Now, about 10,000 transistors cost one cent.

You could see the transitors back then. Each one looked like a little tin can, 1/4-inch wide, with three wires sticking out. Each transistor in the computer, with the help of a resistor and a capacitor, served as a switch that could turn electrical current on and off. It took a configuration of 12 such switches just to add two 'bits' (binary digits), including the 'carry' from a nearby digit position. That would occupy about a 4-inch by 10-inch area on a circuit board. Now that transistors are so much cheaper, twice as many are used for the same function, and it's all smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

Back then, a computer was a room full of refrigerator-sized cabinets. And because everything was so costly, the computers were as simple as possible. Today's computers, although much smaller physically, are bigger in terms of the numbers of equivalent parts. I remember one of those refrigerator-sized cabinets was a memory storing just 256 words. Just a few days ago, I bought a memory card for a digital camera with one million times larger memory, and it is the size of a penny.

Some kinds of circuits need a 'matched pair' of transitors, for accurate balance. That was hard to acheive when transistors were made as individual devices. The solution was to make them as a pair. It was something like two cookies side-by-side on the same baking sheet, baked at the same time, would come out nearly identical. These were sold in the same little tin cans, but with six wires sticking out of each can. Later, when someone figured out how to make the resistors and capacitors on the same piece of silicon as the transitors, the 'integrated circuit' was born. At first, the integrated circuits where packaged in the same little six-wire cans as the matched transistors. With just two of those integrated circuits, we could make one 'flipflop' (a circuit for storing one bit), which previously occupied about a 4-inch by 6-inch area. Today, thousands of 'flipflops', or millions of transitors, fit on one integrated circuit. I remember that as companies like Motorola and Texas Instruments made more and more dense integrated circuits, they would brag about how many transistors were in each circuit. Now, nobody bothers to count.

The steady increase in integrated circuit density was described by Moore's Law (see here and here), which observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. As the rate slowed, this was later revised to 'double every 18 months' and then to 'double every 24 months'. A few years before I retired, I was asked to design a circuit that could not be built -- yet. I was asked to design the most powerful digital correlator that could be built on one 'chip' in 2010. So I had to use Moore's Law to estimate -- to predict -- how much addition logic could be put into one integrated circuit in 2010. It was tricky, because Moore's Law was sometimes also stated as a doubling of speed rather than density, and addition can not only be done twice as fast by using circuits that are twice as fast, but also by using twice as much circuitry.

This wasn't the first time that I have designed for the future. Most electronic designs are rushed into production, to try to beat the competition. But when designing for GPS (the Global Positioning System) satellites, the design cycle is much slower-paced. The main reason is that if the circuits in a satellite fail, it is VERY expensive to send a repairman (a.k.a. space-walking astronaut) up to fix it. It is also very expensive to launch the satellite to begin with, and often a launch fails, and millions of dollars are suddenly lost. So the design cycle is deliberately slow and very careful, with lots of checking and testing. Then when a GPS satellite is built, it is not launched right away -- it is put into storage, and launched only when an older satellite fails so badly that it needs to be replaced. So, for example, my Phase Meter, which was invented in 1995 and patented in 2002, and destined for new GPS designs, is still not in space yet.

My First Purchase

Here's one of my earliest memories -- when I was about four years old. I found a penny in a couch, and asked my oldest sisters, who were teenagers at the time, who I should give it to. They explained that there was no way of knowing who lost it, so now it belonged to me, because I had found it. Mom agreed. I was partly delighted, and partly puzzled. One sister said I could save it until I had enough to buy something I wanted. The other said it would be a long time before that could happen, because I got no allowance when I was four. Mom said I could buy a cookie with the penny. There was a store down town that sold sugar cookies for one cent each.

I could walk down the street to the store and buy the cookie all by myself, it was proposed. But I had never walked down the street by myself before -- I could get lost. But it was easy, they assured me. And next year, I would be going to school, Mom said, and this was on the way to school, so I would learn part of the route. All I had to do was go down the hill, then uphill a little, across the railroad tracks, then to a street with stores. The store with the cookies was the first one on the right, and the cookies were in a glass case near the front of the store.

They rehearsed the directions with me until I was convinced that I could do it. So, clutching my penny in my fist, I left on this new venture. It helped that the street was straight, because half-way down the hill, I could look ahead and see the railroad tracks, and could look back and see the street in front of our house. When I reached the street with the stores, I turned right and entered the first store. There, behind glass, I saw stacks of BIG sugar-coated cookies. A kind-looking lady leaned over and looked down at me and asked what I wanted. One of those cookies, I said, pointing, and holding up my penny.

Soon I had one of those big cookies in my hands. I had to admire it a bit before I ate it. And I was proud that I had walked to the store and bought it all by myself. Then it occurred to me that if I ate it before returning home, there would be no evidence that I had completed my quest successfully. So I held it very carefully and carried it home and showed it to everybody before I ate it.

Death, From a Heavenly Perspective

Another poem of my youth -- I imagined what death must seem like AFTER arriving in heaven.

Death
written 3/11-12/56

I still remember when I died,
With joyous expectation sighed
While they, not understanding, cried.
My wife was kneeling by my side
Alone; the others stood outside.

I told ner, "God is calling me
The second time. The first time He
Called me a worker here to be,
And now He calls me home. I'll see
Him there, and from sin's grasp be free.

Don't look so sad." She said, "But Dear,
Although to die I have no fear,
To live without you will be drear.
Of course you know I'll shed a tear."
I said, "Although you want me here,

God also wants me. I suppose
He has a reason, for He knows
It's better in that realm where woes
Are gone, and never blows
The storm of strife. The close

Of life on earth is nigh.
I'm going. Do not cry.
I'll see you soon. Good-bye."
And then I breathed the final sigh.
I'm waiting now for her to die.

Bubbles

Another poem of my youth --

Bubbles

"And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." -- 1 John 2:17

Never trust a bubble,
Though it bobbles in the air,
Or drifting gently there,
Does allure.
Though it twinkles in the light
With colorful delight,
Don't be sure.
Though you very lightly grasp it,
Though you very gently clasp it
Like a dunce;
All at once,
Nothing first,
It will burst.

The Development of Information Processing

Mankind has always communicated, and earlier than many admit, by written language. But the invention of the printing press launched a major change in the spread of knowledge, because it was so much more efficient than hand-copied books and traveling teachers and story-tellers. More recently, the Internet has accelerated the spread of knowledge more than ever.

But we have discovered how to do much more than simply reproduce and distribute information efficiently. Perhaps it began when clockmakers figured out how to put short and long notches on a wheel to control the chiming of a clock. Or when the player piano was invented, where holes on a roll of paper control the sequence and timing of the notes played. Other machinery was made to robotically play drums, violins, horns, and other instruments. All these machines translated recorded information into sound. Then the phonograph was invented, which translated sound into recorded information, and afterward translated it back to sound as often as desired. Then came the telephone, which translated sound to an electrical form that could be transported over long distances without recording and playback.

In some of these examples, you can say that the recorded information was translated into mechanical action. For example, the player piano roll controlled the striking of the piano keys. Perhaps this was the inspiration for machines that automated the weaving of tapestry designs -- punched holes controlled whether threads were lifted above or dropped below the path of the shuttle of the loom. Later, punched paper tape was used to control machines that could drill any set of holes in a part to be manufactured, or robotically apply any set of rotary tools to a manufacturing task. These all translate recorded information into a sequence of actions.

Other people were interested in just processing the information, that is, calculating. Astronomers and other scientists relied on long, tedious, and error-prone calculations. Much of the general-purpose calculations could be prepared beforehand and stockpiled (like prepared foods) -- for example, a table of square roots, or trigonometric functions. So people created adding (and subtracting) machines, multiplying (and dividing) machines, and 'difference engines' to generate and use these tables. These machines translated information (such as "30x31") into a useful equivalent of the information (such as 930). The methodology was mechanical actions (for example, rotating digit wheels), but the overall function was information in and equivalent (derived) information out.

So far, all of the types of machines mentioned use a single sequence of information, except when the operator intervenes by choosing the sequence -- choosing the song to be played, or the hole pattern to be drilled, or the formula to be calculated.

Now, what if the machine could control its own sequence? For example, the music player could play the verse, then chorus, change key, play the verse and chorus again, increase the volume and repeat the chorus. The drilling machine could drill 30 boards with pattern A, then 50 boards with pattern B. Or the calculating machine could compute formula A, and if the result is positive, compute formula B, else formula C. And repeat this for another set of data, and another, until 50 sets of data have been processed.

The concept of sequence control, or self-control, or the machine talking to itself, so to speak -- thrust information processing into the computer age. First attempts where mechanical, then vacuum tubes, then transistors. That's the stage where I first got involved. You could see the transistors back then, because they weren't miniaturized yet. Today, millions of transistors are packed into one small package.

It was obvious that many of the things these machines were designed to do were similar to human activities, so words like read, write, memory, and decision were used to describe machine functions. We knew we were trying to emulate human thinking, difficult as it was, and still is.

When computers were developed, the machines became more general-purpose. That's because the machines now had two kinds of information: the information being processed (data), and the information that controlled the processing (software). The visible machine (the hardware) could do almost any processing, given suitable software. Give it word processing software, and the machine becomes a word processor. Give it accounting software, and it becomes an accounting processor. Give it telephone control software and hide it inside a telephone, and you have a 'smart' telephone. And don't tell the consumer that there's a computer in his telephone, lest he be afraid to use it.

At some point along the way, the designers realized that the information that they were putting into these machines was actually language. It was strange languages designed to best fit the design of the machines, but still, it was language. It was difficult and error-prone to write machine language, so more human-like languages were designed that could be translated (by computer, of course) into machine language. A simple example of 'programming language':

X:= 0; repeat X:= X+1 until X > 9;

Translation to real English: Set the data called 'X' to zero, then keep adding one to it until it is greater than nine.

This programming language gets translated into machine language for use by the computer hardware. I won't show it to you -- trust me, it just looks like gibberish.
___________________

Contemporary with the computer scientists, scientists of biology were discovering DNA, and RNA, and began unraveling the mysteries of the machinery of life. The DNA, they found, was another kind of machine language. Whereas our computers use an alphabet of 0 and 1 (zero and one), the DNA uses an alphabet of A, G, C, and T, which name the acids Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine which are the symbolic parts of a DNA molecule. These are arranged in a sequence, just as are the symbols of human and computer languages. Some parts of the sequence describe how to make proteins, and some parts function like punctuation. Some parts haven't been deciphered yet; some have assumed that these are useless junk, but others are beginning to understand uses for the presumed 'junk DNA'.

Those who ascribe to the faith called Evolution have convinced themselves that all this complex machinery, which we have only begun to decipher, came into existence through random processes. They would like to believe that somehow information can arise out of randomness, but we who design computers know better.

Making information out of nothing is like the pseudoscience of perpetual-motion machines. These were proven to be impossible, because energy cannot be perfectly stored or transmitted. Always a little bit leaks out of the machine -- typically friction creating heat -- lost energy. In computer science and information theory, we know that likewise, information cannot be perfectly stored or transmitted. Always a little bit (or more) of error creeps in, and the data erodes. That's why hard drives have CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) codes to detect errors, and we backup our data and software with extra copies. That's why our bodies have redundant copies of the DNA.

Yes, we see DNA errors (genetic defects), and we see adaptive adjustments to the 'gene pool', but nobody has ever observed information being created out of nothing. Like any other information, Somebody created it. That's a subject that we will pursue further, later.

The Start of System Engineering

In my early years working for ITT, we designed computers and other related hardware, but not software.  The software for our computers was written by other companies.  Then the day came that ITT management decided that we needed our own programmers (software writers).  So they hired a bunch of programmers, built a bunch of new offices, and created a Software Department.

It seemed strange to me, but these new people kept to themselves -- they were fellow employees, working on the same project, but strangers.  They sat in one area of the lunchroom, and we sat in another area.  It seemed that the hardware engineers thought that the programmers were wizards of the mysterious realm of software, and the programmers thought that the engineers were wizards of the mysterious realm of hardware.  It was like we spoke two different languages.

It didn't seem right to me, so on one lunch hour, I introduced myself to one of the strangers, and started fishing for some common ground that we might be able to talk about.  I mentioned a 'register' (hardware holding a small piece of data) that I knew held data that the programmers used.  He told me that the programmers thought the sequence of the data was annoying, because it made their work more difficult.  But, he added, "I guess the engineers must have a good reason for doing it that way."  I told him, no, we didn't have any reason for arranging the data in that sequence.  One sequence was as good as any other to us, so we just chose an arbitrary sequence.  But if we only knew what the programmers preferred, we would happily arrange the data any way they wanted.

After lunch, I told my boss about my conversation.  My story made it clear that if the engineers and programmers had an opportunity to discuss common issues, we might be able to help each other do our jobs better.

A week later, my boss and his boss called all the engineers to a meeting.  A new department was going to be formed, it was announced.  The new System Engineering Department would oversee the technical issues common to both hardware and software, to ensure that both would work together smoothly.  And I and my boss would work in the new department.  That was the beginning of 'System Engineering' at ITT.

Christ's Love For Me

Two more poems from my youth --

Christ's Love For Me

I cannot understand why He
Could love and die for such as me;
I wasn't worthy of His love,
But yet He came from Heaven above
And took my sin and died for me.
I cannot understand why He
Could love and die for such as me.

He carried all my sin away
And now I have no sin today.
I cannot understand why He
Could love and die for such as me.

He gave me faith to live by grace,
So I could see Him face to face;
I cannot understand why He
Could love and die for such as me.

Because Christ's love motivates us, it seems natural that the next poem would be --

Something For Him

I think of what He's done for Jim,
And like to do something for Him.
In my own strength, I can't do aught,
But in His strength -- see what He's wrought!

He'll knead the clay from every wrong,
And make of me a vessel strong
And filled with service to the brim;
I'd like to do something for Him.

Engineering Precursors

As I look back at my youth, I am amused at the little things I did that sparked my interest in engineering, and even gave me some insights into the workings of computers -- even though I hadn't the foggiest notion what a computer was back then. Each time I learned a new physical principle, it fascinated me, and I just had to explore how it could be used.

At one point, I learned how to make an electromagnet. You could wrap thinly-insulated wire many times around a big nail, connect the wire to a battery and the big nail turned into a magnet and could pick up little nails. Disconnect the battery, and the little nails would fall to the floor. I bought the wire and battery, and demonstrated the magic to my younger brothers.

Then I learned about the telegraph and the Morse code, and the history of how these were used to send messages over great distances. Now I was cutting up 'tin' cans to get strips of steel. I mounted an electromagnet and a strip of steel on a block of wood, so that when the electromagnet was energized, the strip would click down on the electromagnet. Another steel strip, wood block, and nails was used to make a switch to turn the electromagnet on and off.

.---- switch -------------------------------- electromagnet
'---- battery ------------------------------- and click-strip

The switch and battery would be 50 feet away from the electromagnet, connected by a pair of wires. When you tapped on the switch, the electromagnet would click 50 feet away. Now all I had to do is teach my younger brothers Morse code, and we could have loads of fun. Well, they didn't think that memorizing a code was fun, so I made a chart for them. That was a little easier, but still they resisted. It was hard to get a consistent rhythm, else a 'dit' and 'dah' could be confused. So I modified the telegraph with a double switch, three connecting wires, and two electromagnets, so that a 'dit' and 'dah' were signalled by separate electromagnets. Years later, I learned that some historic telegraphs were actually constructed in a similar manner.

Then I learned about 'relays' -- the metal strip pulled by the electromagnet could function as a switch. Now, turning on a switch here could turn on a switch over there. Or, you could make it so that turning on the first switch would turn off the second switch, and vice versa. That opened up a bunch of new possibilites.

What if you connected the relay so that when it was on, it would turn itself off, and when it was off, it would turn itself on? The cycle of cause-and-effect would repeat itself, wouldn't it? Well, I built one to see what would happen, and sure enough, I had a buzzer -- the relay couldn't decide whether it should be on or off, so it turned on and off, on and off, as fast as it could.

What if you connected two relays so that relay 1 would try to do the same as relay 2 (on if on, and off if off), but relay 2 would try to do the opposite of relay 1 (off if on, and on if off)?
Then the relays would go through a cycle like this:
relay1 .. relay2
off . . . . . off
off . . . . . on
on . . . . . on
on . . . . . off
off . . . . . off
off . . . . . on
on . . . . . on
on . . . . . off
... etc.

That made an even louder buzz! (With a slower cycle, the relays had more time to turn fully on and fully off.) I was having so much fun that I had to buy more batteries.

Next, I learned about serial and parallel connection of switches. If switches were connected in series, like this --

======== switch1 ----- switch2 ----- switch3 ========

-- then the wire pathway was on if switch1 AND switch2 AND switch3 were on. And if switches were connected in parallel, like this --

=======,--- switch1 ---,
. . . . . . |--- switch2 ---|
. . . . . . '--- switch3 ----'======

-- then the wire pathway was on if switch1 OR switch2 OR switch3 were on. Since relays could be substituted for the switches, endless possibilities lay before me. I struggled to construct interesting and useful machinery with these ideas, but I was overwhelmed. My trial-and-error methods didn't work because there were too many possiblities.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning some of the principles of computer logic. But I didn't even know what a computer was, and I didn't have all the tools. Later, in college, I learned about Boolean logic, Karnough maps, DeMorgan's theorem, Venn diagrams -- tools that a designer of computer logic needs. And when I got out of college and into ITT, the first thing I did was to design part of a computer. But the switches and relays were now replaced by transistors.

A REALLY Personal Computer

Years before the PC (the so-called Personal Computer) became widely known to households across America, there were a few of us that had really personal computers. In those days, we predicted that someday, computers would be sold like radios and toasters. We called this dream the appliance computer, because it would be just another household appliance. Alas, when the appliance computer arrived, the marketeers called it a personal computer, but it wasn't nearly as personal as what we had before that.

When I began my engineering career in 1959, the first job I had was designing part of a computer. Computers were a roomful of refrigerator-sized cabinets back then. Later, I designed entire computers, and the software that was used to make software. As computers became smaller, I often yearned to have my own. I once designed one that was so small I might afford to build it, but it was really a toy that wouldn't be very practical. Finally, the technology advanced to the point where a few companies made kits that allowed people with the right skills to build a computer that they could afford.

I had already built a few radio receivers and audio amplifiers from kits, so I knew I could do it. The kits included the design drawings, and I also had all of the details for all of the software. So with full knowledge of every detail of the hardware and software, I could customize the design to my liking. For various reasons, I made modifications to both hardware and software, so it was as personal as you could get.

The picture on the left shows the main computer box and its contents: the power supply, one board for the computer chip and essentials, another board for memory (RAM) , and a small board to interface to the keyboard and monitor. There was room to add more memory boards and interface boards.


I also built the keyboard and monitor shown on the left here. All of those keys on the keyboard are actually switches mounted on a circuit board.

The monitor was built with a television tube, and the circuitry handled only text -- no graphics. It could display 25 lines of text 40 characters long. I modified the design to double the display memory. This didn't display twice as much text at once. Instead I put a switch in front that selected which memory to use.


There was no hard drive, and no floppies. The only permanent (power-off) memory was a pair of ordinary audio cassette recorders. The box shown on the left here, also built from a kit, interfaced the computer to the audio recorders. The data rate was only 300 bits per second, so when it was time to load or store a program or data, you started it, took a coffee break, and hoped that it went OK. I modified this design, too.

When I finally made the transition to a new appliance computer (a.k.a. "PC"), it seemed strange to be using a computer that held hardware and software secrets. Something like driving a car that you're not allowed to look under the hood.

And for a few years, the media didn't dare mention words like "floppy", "software", etc, assuming that this was some realm of specialized knowledge, like Markov Analysis, that most people would have no idea about. Then they suddenly realized that there were many households with PCs, and it was OK to mention them to the general public.

My First Patents

Some people ask me about my inventions. So here's the story of my first two inventions, at least the first two to be patented. I'm lumping two together, because the second invention was an improvement on the first one, and because the second invention was the first to be patented, and vice versa. First, a little historic background..

The U.S. Army started using digital communication long before the commercial world, because only digital communication could be safely encrypted. A voice signal was sampled 8000 times per second, and each sample converted into 8 bits, converting the voice into a stream of 64000 bits per second. To minimize the number of radios or cables, 12 (or more) voice signals would typically be multiplexed (merged) into one signal, so that one radio or cable could carry 12 voice signals at once. The company I worked for (ITT) made radios, cable modems, and multiplexers for the Army.

A 12-channel (12 voices) multiplexer would arrange the data in 'frames', at 8000 frames per second. Since the frame rate equaled the sampling rate, each frame contained one sample from each voice channel (signal) -- 12 samples in all, 8 bits per sample, or 96 bits per frame. So a received stream of bits could be divided into 96-bit frames, the frames divided into 8-bit samples, and the samples sent to separate circuits that ultimately reached 12 different soldiers, one of which was the communications operator.

If a radio or cable modem was turned on, or had recovered from an outage, it wouldn't generally be starting at the beginning of the frame. The circuits needed a way to discover where the frame began, else those 12 soldiers might all get the wrong bits, and that would be very confusing. So they 'stole' the last bit of the frame, which was the last bit of the sample for the last channel, for a marker (called a 'synch bit') to identify the 'edge' of the frame. The 'synch bit' was zero and one on alternate frames -- an easy pattern to recognize. That left only 7 bits for each sample used by the last channel, the one used by the communications operator, degrading his voice quality, so he had to say "What was that again?" more often than the other soldiers.

A 'frame synchronization' circuit was used to find the synch bits, correcting the multiplexer's timing so that it would start at the beginning of each frame. From an arbitrary start, it would count off every 96th bit and check if it looked like a synch bit, meaning that it matched a 10101010... pattern. If it matched, it would check one frame later to verify that it wasn't an 'accidental' match; but if it didn't match, it would slip the timing by counting 97 bits (instead of 96) to the next potential synch bit.

There was a need to make the synchronization procedure faster so that communication could get started faster, and restarted faster when there was an outage. This would also make the communication less vulnerable to enemy jammers.

My first invention made the frame synchronization twice as fast, at a cost of about one more 'flipflop' in the circuit. The second invention made it even faster, using more flipflops. After many experiments, I found that the second speed-up was proportional to the square root of the number of additional flipflops. So the cost/benefits were:

1 flipflop -- 2 times faster
1+4 flipflops -- 2x2 times faster
1+9 flipflops -- 2x3 times faster
1+16 flipflops -- 2x4 times faster
1+25 flipflops -- 2x5 times faster (5 = square root of 25)
etc.

I thought the square root relationship was strange and mysterious. It illustrates the fact that inventions are generally half bright-idea and half discovery.

The first invention allowed the next bit to be examined after a mismatch -- a delay of 1 bit rather than 97 bits. The second invention anticipated the timing slips, examining the next several bits before they become the current candidate for synch bit. Later inventions dealt with the problem of noise (bit errors). These inventions helped ITT get more contracts.

Patent 3,597,539 - issued 8-3-71
Patent 3,594,502 - issued 7-20-71 - links to USPTO

Later, I was asked to sign papers when rights to use these patents were sold to various countries: Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Netherlands, India, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, Russia, South Africa, and Belgium. It seemed strange to sign papers in languages that I couldn't read, although there were English copies. The ones for Russia had the most paper and the most signatures. They even double-notarized some of the documents -- they didn't trust us! Years later, they must have changed the procedures, because they stopped asking me to sign such documents. I didn't really have a choice, anyway.

I guess I should esplain that when I joined ITT, I had to sign a document giving them full rights to any inventions arising from my work for them. So that's why I didn't have any choice about signing the papers. The only time ITT didn't get full rights was when the Contracts Department goofed, and one of my inventions became the possession of the U.S. Air Force.

The patent protection rights only last 17 years, so these patents have been in the public domain since 1988. And you can't get full-text copies from the US Patent Office web site, because their database only has patents issued since 1976.

Poetry of my Youth

I wrote poetry from when I was seven until I was married and got a job. For reasons I don't understand, I stopped writing poetry after that. But I still have some of the poems from my youth. Here's one I wrote as a teenager:

My Salvation

When I confessed my guilt and sin --
When did I let the Savior in?
I cannot tell
When Jesus cleansed each stain and blot;
The time, that minute, I cannot
Remember well.

I know I pondered in my heart
Whe'er He should enter or depart.
Within my soul
I was disturbed; I could not rest
Until the Lord dwelt in my breast.
He's now my Goal.

Since then I've known of blessings great;
Since then He's taught me sin to hate
And Him to love.
In trial and danger, dread and fear,
I know He's close and very near
In heav'n above.

Yes, I accepted Christ as my Savior when I was seven year's old. I don't remember a date, but I remember praying with my Mom at the southwest corner of the dining-room table. In my late teen years, I doubted, reexamined, and then confirmed my relationship with God, and that relationship has grown steadily closer over the years.

Early Lessons in Prayer

Being brought up in a Christian home, I learned about prayer at an early age. And I found that you really learn about prayer not by being taught or by talking about it, but by experience.

The earliest experience I remember was when I was four or five years old. I was laying on my back on the bottom level of a bunk bed that I shared with one of my brothers. I was supposed to be getting to sleep, but instead I was thinking about what I'd heard in church about God answering prayer. I had a piece of tin-foil, and I rolled it in my hands as I wondered how prayer worked. They said you could ask things of God, and he would answer you. He could do anything, even things that were impossible for people. I squeezed and rolled the tin-foil, making a little shiny ball. I ought to try this; see if it really works.

I looked at my little ball. It looked like silver, which I heard was expensive, but I knew it was just cheap tin-foil. I heard that gold was even more expensive than silver. A gold ball like that would be quite valuable. I could ask God to turn it into gold. So I tucked my little ball into the sheet under the mattress above me, and asked God to turn it into gold by the next morning.

Next morning, I looked -- it was still tin-foil as before, and I pondered why God hadn't changed it. It wasn't because he couldn't -- after all, he had created the whole world. He just didn't want to do it. It obviously wasn't important to do; it was only for my entertainment, I realized. So I concluded that God didn't want to be a magician that entertained people with miracles. He must reserve miracles for important occasions.
____________________________

The next prayer experience I remember was when I was six years old. My oldest sister had recently married, and was now living across town. My Mom and another older sister were explaining to me where it was, relative to the school that I walked to. "You could walk over there and visit her, see her new house", they assured me. "Just walk past the school, and take the next left." They described landmarks and drew a map to make it clearer to me. Finally I was convinced that I could do it. If I couldn't find the house, I would just walk home.

I got to the right street, but finding the right house was a problem. They had given me details describing the house, but it seemed to me that many houses on the street came close to fitting the description. There were so many details, and I think I forgot a few. I walked up and down the street comparing houses to the details I could remember. Finally, I gave up. I would have to walk home and confess my failure.

But I had reversed my direction so many times, now I wasn't sure which way was the way home. I had walked a long way from the end of the street where I started, and there were no side streets, just houses. It was a clouded day, so I couldn't see the sun. Whichever way I walked, I had the nagging feeling that I could be walking further from home and would only have to walk the same distance again. "How could I ask any one to help me? They don't know where I live", I thought.

So I prayed, asking God to help me find my way home. After I prayed, the thought came to me: "All I need to do is find out which way is south. People here would know which way is south." So I found some kids in front of their house, and asked them. "I'll go ask my Mom", one of them said. When they came back out of the house, they pointed down the street: "That way."

So I found my way home. As I passed the school, I thought "God does answer prayer -- when it's important."