Sunday, April 14, 2019

Baptism Under Fire At Berkeley!

Recently I started reading the book "Creation & Evolution 101,  A Guide to Science and the Bible in Plain Language" by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz.  In chapter one they write of going to the University of California Berkeley to interview three professors for information to put into their book. 

They tongue in cheek tell us, "It was a bright and beautiful morning, and there we were touring the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, just across the bay from San Francisco.  It didn't take us long to figure out that we were probably the dumbest guys walking through Sather Gate on this particular day.  We knew this because, when it comes to academics, Cal (as it is known by locals and students alike) just happens to be the number one public university in the country.  And it is one of the leading universities in the world when it comes to science."

A few pages later the authors tell us, "We went to the second professor's office, which is located in the Lawrence Berkeley Lab (trust us, this is a very impressive building because of what goes on inside).  This particular guy, who is an astrophysicist, was the leader of a science project that measured the beginning of the universe (this was a very big science project, not like your sixth grade science-fair entry that measured mold on a block of cheese."

Those two excerpts triggered a really big Flash Back - all the way back to about 1968.  I had spent the past 10 years as a Field Engineer working in the technical side of the computer world - and now I had accepted a job with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and was switching over to the sales side as a Sales Engineer.  For the first few months I worked as an Application Engineer before moving into the sales position and one of my tasks was to give Digital Computer Logic Seminars to prospective clients.  DEC was very strong in the university and education market.  So my first seminar was to be at University of California at Berkeley.

This was not to be an introductory seminar of an hour or so.  No, this was to be an all day seminar.  Some knowledgeable soul at DEC headquarters in Boston had written a booklet which was about 25-30 pages long and was basically the meat of the all day seminar.

Just to give you a bit of background.  Digital Equipment Corporation had been founded in 1957 by Ken Olsen (ex MIT Lincoln Lab engineer), Harlan Anderson (ex MIT Lincoln Lab engineer), and Stan Olsen (brother of Ken Olsen).  It quickly became the number 2 computer company in America, behind behemoth IBM.

Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson were the engineering geniuses behind DEC and its computer products.  Since the computers were built from digital logic modules which were plugged into a backplane to create the different computers - those same logic modules could be used to create a number of other digital products.  Stan Olsen was given his own department within the company tasked with selling the DEC digital logic modules as a separate product line.  Although the computer side of the company took off like a rocket and quickly became a major player in the mini-computer and main frame market - the Logic Module side of the house was dragging its feet.

A bright sales manager in Canada decided to start presenting Digital Logic Module Seminars - and his sales took off.  Encouraged by that, Stan Olsen mandated that all DEC sales offices would begin to offer Digital Logic Module Seminars to help prospective clients learn how to design their products using DEC Digital Logic Modules.  This is where my background fit nicely in their plans.  I had years of experience as a computer field engineer - I had taught classes on computer logic, troubleshooting, and repair - and in my last several companies I had been the "go to" guy when other field engineers could not solve a problem.

So the DEC regional manager in Palo Alto, California, hired me to be a Sales Engineer responsible for presenting Digital Logic Module Seminars.  And I was told that my first seminar assignment was at the University of California Berkeley.  Little did I know what lay ahead.

The seminar was to be in a local hotel conference room in Berkeley.  And I should have recognized the first omen when I drove into their subterranean parking lot.  I was driving my prime 1965 Chevy Malibu SS convertible, in cherry condition - and as I was pulling into the very narrow parking spot, I scratched my car against a parking lot post. 

And to make matter even worse, two of the hotel housekeepers were walking by as my accident happened.  They smiled, maybe more of a sneer, and said (I will never forget their smiling words), "You scratched your pretty car."  The only thing which prevented me from replying with a caustic remark - was my deeply ingrained Southern teaching that a man does not say those things to a woman.

I go upstairs to the conference room and neatly lay a writing pad, a pencil, and the DEC Digital Logic Module Seminar book at each position on the tables.  I had studied the Digital Logic Module Seminar book for two weeks in preparation for presenting this seminar.  Shortly the very first participant, Tom Taussig, came into the room.  He picked up the Seminar Book, flipped through it, and said, "Pretty simple.  What are we going to talk about today?"  Omen number two!

When the room filled with participants, I quickly found that I had a room full of professors and scientists, mostly all Ph.d.s, from UC Berkeley and from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, the Atomic Energy Department arm of UC Berkeley.  And I had to teach them - ALL day!

Surprisingly, the morning went pretty well.  Then just before lunch we were discussing a specific logic module and in bold letters in the seminar book, it told us that if an input on the module was not connected to a source - it had to be connected to ground. 

One gentleman in the back of the room raised his hand and asked, "Is that because .  .  .  .  ?  That was the part of his question I could understand.  Then he went on asking something about thermodynamics and a few other big words that flew over my head.  His question must have gone on for about ten minutes and when he finished, thank God it was time for lunch, I told him, "I don't know the reason - but since we are breaking for lunch, I will call the engineer who designed the module back in Boston and get you an answer."

As they go off to lunch, I go to the phone and placed a call to the design engineer at DEC headquarters in Boston.   I asked him the same question, but in my more real world understanding, "Why do we have to ground the empty input ports?"   The answer the design engineer, the man who had designed that module, gave me was, "We don't know!  We just know that if the input is not grounded weird things happen."

And that is exactly what I went back into the conference room after lunch and told that room full of Ph.d.s from UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley Lab.  Believe it or not, they accepted that answer and we finished the day with no more glitches.  Bill Gray's "baptism under fire" at the University of California Berkeley was, and I was surprised, considered a success.

After that I continued giving Digital Logic Module Seminars in northern California and, when the company needed a seminar giving computer salesman in Huntsville - and it was close to my home in Alabama - I moved to Huntsville where I was faced with all the NASA Ph.d.s and engineers.  After a while I began to get bored and started adding more computer logic, design, and trouble shooting information to the seminars, all across Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

So, my advise - be careful what books you read, for they can trigger massive Flash-Backs.  All I have to say is, "Thank you, Lord, for the memories!"

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill 

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