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Silicon Valley Nation: Jim Williams' engineering bench comes home
Brian Fuller
10/16/2012 2:35 PM EDT
MILPITAS, Calif.--Jim Williams' death
last year stunned the analog world, which would be staggered again days later when another analog engineering giant, Bob
Pease, would
die in a car accident after returning from Williams'
memorial service.
The shock eventually wore off, although few days pass here at Linear Technology, Williams' employer, without some invocation of his spirit. The more time passed, the more the spirit picked up around Williams' memory and, in fairly short order, his legendary engineering bench had a temporary home in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
That installation ran its course and then the question became, what to do with that famous bench and everything that goes with it? John Hamburger, Linear spokesman, said some folks kicked around the idea of donating it to a university. That idea didn't last.
"Suddenly, I got a lot of phone calls from longtime Linear engineers who said in no uncertain terms 'That bench belongs here!'" Hamburger said.
Where to now?
The question then became, where? Linear has a modest corporate HQ lobby with a large display case of industry and customer awards. There isn't a lot of room, but that would be one obvious and public place for the bench. Instead, a few weeks ago, the bench found its permanent home in Eric Soule's lab, where it sits as a testament to one engineer's life and an inspiration to all the analog engineers who pass by every day.
Says Linear CTO Bob Dobkin, a close friend and decades-long partner of Williams, "We miss him, sure. If someone needed an oscillator with 1 ppm distortion, you can't go out and buy that. He built it."
What follows are some photos I took on a recent visit that hopefully capture the spirit of one of history's most unique analog designers.
Next: The installation
The shock eventually wore off, although few days pass here at Linear Technology, Williams' employer, without some invocation of his spirit. The more time passed, the more the spirit picked up around Williams' memory and, in fairly short order, his legendary engineering bench had a temporary home in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
That installation ran its course and then the question became, what to do with that famous bench and everything that goes with it? John Hamburger, Linear spokesman, said some folks kicked around the idea of donating it to a university. That idea didn't last.
"Suddenly, I got a lot of phone calls from longtime Linear engineers who said in no uncertain terms 'That bench belongs here!'" Hamburger said.
Where to now?
The question then became, where? Linear has a modest corporate HQ lobby with a large display case of industry and customer awards. There isn't a lot of room, but that would be one obvious and public place for the bench. Instead, a few weeks ago, the bench found its permanent home in Eric Soule's lab, where it sits as a testament to one engineer's life and an inspiration to all the analog engineers who pass by every day.
Says Linear CTO Bob Dobkin, a close friend and decades-long partner of Williams, "We miss him, sure. If someone needed an oscillator with 1 ppm distortion, you can't go out and buy that. He built it."
What follows are some photos I took on a recent visit that hopefully capture the spirit of one of history's most unique analog designers.
Next: The installation
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David Ashton
10/16/2012 6:06 PM EDT
One thing I like about Jim Williams is that if anyone tells me my workbench is a mess, I can tell them I'm in good company! It is right that it has become a shrine of sorts. I wonder what happened to Bob Pease's bench? Brian....???
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Virtus Probi
10/17/2012 3:22 PM EDT
I hope the Jaguar model has a spot in the display. Jim was a brilliant man, for sure.
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RRynk
10/18/2012 11:11 AM EDT
'scope with Schweber's number attached being Tektronics Type 575 Transistor Curve Tracer. Jim was avid user of Tek instruments from the 60s and 70s
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Brian Fuller2
10/18/2012 11:40 AM EDT
David, excellent question, and you've prompted the TI folks to dig into that. It turns out Bob's workspace at National was a big of, um, a hazard shall we say. But we'll work to solve this mystery.
Cheers,
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simonb
10/24/2012 10:15 AM EDT
Alan Martin cleaned bobs desk. It stayed pretty the same for about 6 months after he passed away. Some of his stuff was packed up.
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Brian Fuller2
10/24/2012 10:35 AM EDT
@Simonb, I heard on Monday that whatever was left was packed up and deposited with Bob's widow. I can imagine she was overwhelmed.
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