Me
Me - A Super-Mini Biography
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There is so much to say, but I will attempt to make it short and leave out the down and dirty things..oops.
I started late at about 13 becoming interested in electronics. My Uncle Kenneth who lived upstairs was an expert in repairing radios, TVs and all sorts of electronic things. I learned a lot from him. During high school I was a partner in all sorts of experiments including putting a trail of chemicals across the hallway in the high school and lighting it. It was lots of beautiful colors because of the various chemicals we included. It also caused a lot of chaos because we lit it right at break time between classes when everyone changed classes.
That was a dangerous prank, but here is another not so dangerous prank we did. We, a group of us sat at a lunch table (they held about 8 or 10 students) and secretly placed the small juice glasses under all four legs. It was hard to detect with all of us sitting at the table. When people started coming down the aisle with their lunch tray, someone would surely bump into the table and it would fall and make a loud racket, plus our trays would all go to the floor too. Often the person who did it would drop their tray in the process and litter the floor with their lunch. Everyone in the lunchroom near the table would crack up laughing. Of course the teachers were greatly unhappy and sometimes we would get in trouble.
At 17 I was deeply involved in electronics and got an amateur radio license, which I kept for over 50 years. I made friends with people from all over the world either talking to them by radio telephone or code. I even talked to many people in Russia and those countries when there was the cold war going on. I went to the military and operated a secret mobile radio (and other stuff) station. I talked to many of my buddies over that system plus did my dirty work for the military.
After a stint in the Service I got a job assembling computers. Then as a precision assembler for oscillographs. During that job I was promoted to an electronic technician which I did for a while for Zerox, Teledyne, and some other electronics companies. Computers were new and I was not going to be left behind so I got a job as a computer digitizer for an engineering company.
That was a very interesting job where I worked with a bunch of young phd’s in researching for oil using computers. I was a digitizer and converted analog maps into a digital file using sophisticated computer programs. I produced the maps of oil in LA area and the North Slope Alaskan oil fields. Also they did research work for the Navy using a long wave tank. That was interesting too.
However what I liked most and it was not part of my job was experimenting with lasers. Lasers were new and it was very interesting. Till this day I have a laser, but not not the original cw gas laser. One experiment we did with a low power neon/argon laser is described elsewhere. Sometime during that time I combined electronics with the laser and was able to talk over a laser beam. Duh. That’s really old school since today we have fiber optics as a way to receive cable TV. That method is using lasers to pump the signal through the fiber optic strands going ultimately to your TV if you have cable TV.
Trivia - Do you know what a maser is? It has to do with electronics.
Trivia - Name a type of laser using something we exhale every day. It can be extremely powerful.
Trivia - I drove a 1969 sports car that had fiber optics in it to monitor the lights. What kind of car was it?
