The Engineer's Tale

I always wanted to be an engineer.

I grew up about where the California Zephyr reached its cruising speed on its daily run out of Chicago. From the grade crossing I could read the names on the cars - Silver Cloud, Silver Mountain, Silver Forest - flashing by me as I stood there with my bicycle. A few miles to the west it would punch through the edge of the world as I knew it. After two days of rushing across the prairie, winding around Indian territory, and climbing through the mountains, it would ultimately reach that mythical land of palm trees and surf that appeared to us mortals only as fleeting images on giant theatre screens. I dreamed of making that journey myself someday, at the controls of a mighty streamliner. Only later did I inherit my father's appreciation of steam power.

My father always told me that he had been born at a very young age. I cannot make the same claim. At the age of twenty, while attending the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, I was inspired by the story of Frankenstein and decided to create a living creature. I looked high and low for a suitable subject. But, being unable to find any volunteers, I found it necessary to create myself.

Never trust a computer you cannot lift.
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There was a computer at the university, one of the ILLIAC series. It was woven into the core of a fortress like building. But it was very impersonal, being about as accessible as Earth orbit is now. It did not interest me.

What did interest me was broadcasting. I worked for about a decade, first in radio and then in television, as what is known in that business as an engineer. I pulled cables, not trains. And I did not design any new equipment. But I loved creating programs, with sound and later with images, as well.

Eventually I did make that journey I had dreamed of, although only at the controls of a mighty Volkswagen. By the time Richard Nixon announced his resignation, I was in a bar in San Francisco recording the public's reaction on two inch videotape for the local news.

Never trust a computer you cannot carry in your pocket.
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In a couple of years, computers started getting personal and I started looking for ways to include them in my work. In only a couple more years, they had become my work, and they have been ever since. I now engineer hardware and mostly software for personal and mostly embedded systems using assembly language and mostly using Forth. Creating programs for people has become little more than a hobby for me. But that part of my background helps me keep the user in mind as I create programs for machines.

Since 1984 I have been working exclusively as a consultant. My major ongoing client is Fischer Computer Systems. And my major current client is Orion Instruments, Inc. My availability varies. If you might have need of my services, please get in touch.

Never trust a computer you cannot swallow.
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