Computer History Museum honors Jim Williams and Bob Pease
Museum organizes display of Williams' lab bench to honor analog engineers.
Paul Rako, Technical Editor -- EDN, October 6, 2011
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA (photo,
right), is building an “Engineers at Work” exhibit, which it
plans to open on Oct 15. The exhibit will honor the late
“analog gurus” Jim Williams and Bob Pease, who both died
this year. As part of the exhibit, Dag Spicer, the senior curator
at the museum, will arrange and display Williams’ famously
cluttered workbench (photo, below left). Jon Plutte, the media producer at
the museum, notes that the exhibit will “celebrate the engineers of today
and inspire the engineers of tomorrow.”EDN will also have a role in the museum’s exhibit. John Hamburger, the director of marketing communications at Linear Technology, selected seven issues of EDN, which will be on display. The issues include a sampling of the many articles Jim Williams wrote for EDN over a span of more than three decades. These articles and more are available at www.edn.com/jimwilliams. As part of the video assets of the exhibit, the museum officials interviewed many of the people Williams worked with at Linear Technology, and they also spoke with me.
I asked Tim Regan, an application
manager at the company, how Linear
could possibly move Williams’ bench
11 miles without disturbing the pile
of work on the bench. “The same
way Williams moved the bench seven
years ago,” he replied with a smile.Apparently, when he faced moving the bench between two buildings, Williams took plastic-film shipping wrap and simply wrapped the whole bench with his equipment and prototype boards in place. When he arrived at his new lab, he just cut the shipping film off the bench. The staff at the Computer History Museum was nice enough to let me snap a picture of the Williams bench as they received it in the shipping wrap (photo, below right), which warmed my heart because it shows how Williams is still solving engineering problems even after his death.
Talkback
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Yup, that's how I remember Jim WIlliam's bench in the lab at LTC.
I never asked him how he could find stuff in there - I knew what I always told my mom when she'd say my room was a mess and strongly urge me to clean up : "But Mom, it's an ORGANIZED mess!"
Mark Bohrer - 2011-19-10 15:18:54 PDT -
Seeing Jim's workbench and reading his and Bob Pease's great articles gave me comfort in our company's equally messy and overcrowded, but very productive, labs. Instead of being distracted with fluff and appearances, Bob and Jim focussed on the key engineering (and other) issues and fundamentals, and thereby encouraged the right mix of creativity and rock solid design methodology in a generation of us newer engineers. I deeply miss them both.
Joel Libove - 2011-15-10 09:10:57 PDT -
orget plastic wrap. If National's execs had some imagination and a sense of humor, they would have built a box form around the late Pease's office, and then poured acrylic into it to preserve it forever.
Andy T - 2011-14-10 07:44:37 PDT -
>>>>They were also going to recreate Bob P. office, but it was deemed a fire hazard"
Ha, ha, ha, ha.... Somehow I think Bob would get a laugh out of that!
Steve H - 2011-11-10 14:03:11 PDT -
With the indoctrination of 5S methodology many would wonder how these guys ever manage to do anything worthwhile. Fortunately I understand and appreciate the order they have created in what may appear to be chaos.
Mike Duvall - 2011-11-10 11:09:05 PDT
